Flood risk is an ever-growing challenge, exacerbated by climate change, urbanisation, and increasing rainfall. Our CEO Simon Crowther was recently invited to be a keynote speaker at Floodex in London. His talk highlights the urgent need for proactive flood planning in new developments. In this video he offers a comprehensive look at the state of flood risk today and the steps needed to ensure a safer, more resilient future.
The Growing Challenge of Flood Risk
Flooding is no longer a sporadic occurrence but a persistent and escalating threat. With changes in climate leading to more frequent and severe rainfall, alongside rapid urbanisation, traditional flood management approaches are struggling to keep up. Simon’s presentation critiques current policies, pointing out their inadequacies in addressing the evolving nature of flood risks.
He emphasises that without significant reform, the consequences for communities, infrastructure, and local economies could be devastating.
Why Proactive Flood Planning Matters
Proactive flood planning is not just about reacting to potential disasters but about integrating resilience into the foundation of new developments. Simon’s talk underscores the importance of protecting communities and reducing economic losses by prioritising flood mitigation at the design stage.
The cost of inaction is high, with flooding already causing billions in damages annually. By planning ahead, developers can save costs in the long run while ensuring safer, more sustainable developments.
More Houses Being Built
The UK faces a pressing need to increase its housing quota to accommodate a growing population and address the housing crisis.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has outlined an ambitious strategy to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years, focusing on sustainable development and revitalising urban areas.
This plan includes reinstating mandatory housing targets for local authorities, reforming planning regulations to expedite construction, and encouraging the use of brownfield sites to preserve green spaces.
One issue here – is to ensure that flood risk is not overlooked.
Strategies for Mitigation
Simon highlights several practical strategies developers can adopt to mitigate flood risks:
Resilient Design: Designing buildings and infrastructure to withstand and recover from flooding more effectively. Flood resilience requires collaboration. Developers, local authorities, and technology providers must work together. Regular audits and maintenance checks should be implemented to ensure that flood defences and drainage continue to perform as intended over time.
Risk Mapping and Modelling: Technology plays a critical role in flood planning. New tools, such as AI, predictive analytics, and advanced flood mapping, offer developers and planners a more precise understanding of flood risks. These technologies can model the impact of extreme weather events on a granular level, helping identify vulnerabilities and solutions early in the process.
Sequential testing: Flood planning should prioritise developing on low-risk sites first, with high-risk areas avoided unless there are overriding reasons. While this approach provides a structured framework, compromises are often made due to housing targets and political pressures. The challenge is balancing the need for sustainable development—ensuring homes are close to schools, transport links, and employment centres—with the necessity of keeping people out of harm’s way. This balance is becoming harder to achieve, especially as urban centres and brownfield sites often come with increased flood risks.
Betterment: Policy also focuses not making risk worse elsewhere – but how about incentives to reduce risk for others. Developers pay levies such as Section 106 agreements to local schools, roads, infrastructure. How about incentivising reducing flood risk. If you are developing land, and the local community is at risk of flooding – could you reduce that risk, could a balancing pond or storage area be introduced. So many times, we see upstream developments focused on not increasing runoff but how about reducing risk, slowing the flow, and as a result, perhaps being allowed to offset the cost against a S106 contribution? There must be a way to relook and refocus how we see land.
These strategies are not just recommendations—they are necessities in adapting to the realities of our changing environment.
Building a Resilient Future
Whether you are a developer, policymaker, or someone concerned about the impacts of flooding, Simon’s insights in this video are invaluable. His message is clear: resilience is key and the time to act is now. By prioritising flood planning in new developments, we can build safer, more flood resilient communities that are better equipped to face the challenges of an uncertain environmental challenges.
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Interested in finding out more on how FPS Environmental can help with your flood planning for new developments, speak to our team today, email enquiries@fpsenvironmental.co.uk or book a free 15-Minute Introductory Teams Video Call