Abstract
With around three million properties in England affected by severe weather-driven surface water (pluvial) flooding, and the number likely to increase as a result of climate change, it is important that homeowners and businesses are encouraged to take steps to minimise the effects of future flood events. This is where property-level protection and building resilience measures are important. However, stakeholders will continue to need assistance and advice on how to select appropriate measures. Based on laboratory testing and other desk studies, a guidance document was developed in 2007 giving advice on resilient approaches for new buildings. This was adopted by many organisations, to inform measures that could be used, particularly to deal with residual flood risks, which cannot always be designed out. Since 2009, through the “Statement of Principles” with the insurance industry and the NPPF, unsuitable development has been discouraged in areas at high flood risk. However, with the increased awareness of the need to deal with surface water for existing housing stock, a new standard was needed. Therefore the British Standards Institution has developed a new standard (BS 85500) that updates and extends the guidance document, including retrofitting flood resistance and resilience measures to existing properties. This paper outlines the Standard’s contents and some of the key issues associated with its development.
Highlights
While Government policies in the UK do not advocate the building of dwellings in areas with a significant risk of flooding, the current lack of affordable housing in the UK could lead to an increased likelihood of development on low or residual flood risk areas
The British Standards Institution (BSI) is a business services provider whose principal activity is the production of standards and the supply of standardsrelated services
In 2010, senior civil servants began reporting to BSI technical committees that, as part of an emerging decentralisation policy, Ministers in the new Coalition Government were proposing to reduce the number of detailed government guidance documents, as this was not seen as the best vehicle for such publications
Summary
Many international research programmes have shown that rising global temperatures are leading to changes in the mean weather conditions, which across Europe are being seen as warmer and wetter winters, and drier summers. Following the widespread flooding of summer 2007 and early 2014, flood resistance and resilience have risen higher up the agenda. As a result of the summer 2007 flooding, Sir Michael Pitt [1] made 92 recommendations, of which the following three are relevant to this paper:. X #11 Building Regulations should be revised to ensure that all new or refurbished buildings in high flood-risk areas are flood resistant or resilient;. While Government policies in the UK do not advocate the building of dwellings in areas with a significant risk of flooding, the current lack of affordable housing in the UK could lead to an increased likelihood of development on low or residual flood risk areas. There are a significant number of existing properties at risk from surface water flooding that would benefit from resistance and resilience measures. Some recent publications provide a good overview of this topic [2, 3]
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