Prepare for flooding

There is a lot of guidance on how to prepare for a flood, so that you can protect yourselves, the building and contents, and the land around you.   

Creating a household flood plan is a very effective and simple way to ensure that you are prepared and know what to do in the event of a flood:

• Sign up to receive flood alerts and warnings
• Investigate your property's flood resilience options
• Check your home insurance covers flood damage
• Put important documents safely away from flood risk
• Make sure your pets are chipped and consider where they would go if they needed to be evacuated
• Find out where you cut off your electricity, gas and water
• Prepare a flood kit
  • Torch (check batteries)
  • Food and drinking water
  • Medication and first aid kit
  • Toys for children and pets
  • Rubber gloves and wellingtons
  • Mobile phone and charger 
  • Battery operated radio
  • Insurance documents
  • Keys e.g., house, car
  • Purse / wallet (cash and cards)

Here are some other resources to help you:

• Prepare a household flood plan, to include checklist, contact list, important documents, step by step plan, evacuation plan and flood kit (The Flood Hub) 
• Prepare a personal flood action plan and contact list (Environment Agency)  
• Checklist and action plan (National Flood Forum)
• Household emergency plan (Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, LLR)
• Business continuity plan (Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, LLR)

Don’t forget, if you have any questions, you can always contact us

Find out what equipment may be available to you

National Flood Forum's Protection Advisor’s ready recknor tool has some initial estimates of the costs involved

Blue Pages is a directory of property flood products and services put together to advise and inform you of what’s available to help reduce the risk of flooding to your home.

Sandbags

You'll need to contact your local authority directly to find out if they have sandbags.

However, they are offered on a first come, first served basis and may not be enough to protect your property.  Councils will become quickly overwhelmed with demand during a flood, so you'll most likely need to collect them yourself.

In some cases, parish councils and community resilience groups may also keep a supply of sandbags. Please check your local flood plan or your parish council for more information.

Flooding often happens very quickly and we strongly recommend that you do not rely on this service. If you think you may need sandbags, it could be worth considering getting them from a DIY store in advance.  

Property flood resilience (PFR) is the term used to describe measures that can be fitted to your property or surrounding land or buildings that will help protect it from flooding.  

PFR comes in two forms; 

• resistance measures - things that try to prevent water getting into your home, or 
• resilience measures - things that allow you to recover from flooding more quickly.   

Examples of PFR include:

• flood barriers
• flood doors
• air brick covers and
• non-return valves for toilets and wastewater pipes. 

Almost every property in the UK can benefit from PFR to some degree. For more information visit the property flood resilience pages on the Flood Hub.

Flood resilience measures can be expensive to install. However, there are cheap and simple steps that can be taken to help protect your property and contents.  

While almost every property in the UK can benefit from PFR to some degree, some business premises may be harder to install resistance measures to, such as large warehouses for example.  As such, resilience measures can include hard floors that are easy to clean, raised electrical points or under floor drainage and pumps etc. 
 

Regularly inspect any drainage that might impact your property

This is to make sure that it is clear and running fine. This can be any of the following directly on your property:

• gutters
• drains
• downpipes
• soakaways
• ditches, and
• watercourses.

It can also include the following that might not be on your property but will still impact you if they don’t work properly:

• highway drains
• watercourses etc.,

Visit:

• Flood Hub’s blog on how to reduce flood risk from autumn leaves, and
• the Environment Agency's Reduce the impact of groundwater on your property pages.

Taking some time to inspect these assets (where practical) and arranging for them to be cleared (if they are your responsibility to maintain) or reporting them (if they are not your responsibility to maintain), will help ensure your property can drain effectively in a flood. 

If you would like to report an issue with a third-party asset such as a drain or watercourse etc., please see our who to contact on our Report a flood page.  

Consider sustainable drainage systems (SuDS)  

If you own a property with areas of hardstanding or greenspace, you could consider other measures to help make your business more flood resilient.

Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) are measures that help manage storm water locally (as close to its source as possible), to mimic natural drainage and encourage its infiltration, attenuation and passive treatment. SuDS features include things such as: 

• Permeable paving that allows water to soak through rather than run off. 
• Rainwater harvesting, such as water butts and tanks that store rainwater for use later on plants and gardens. 
• Raingardens, green-roofs, ponds etc that collect water for plants and wildlife.  

Most SuDS features can be retrofitted to existing properties, roofs and premises.

For more information on SuDs, please visit:

• the Local GmeSuDS page for technical standards
• the SusDrain website for detailed advice on considering and installing SuDS
• our role as a statutory consultee regarding Surface water drainage for developments
   

Regardless of whether you have protections in place, there is always a chance they can fail or a flood is great enough to overwhelm them.

For households

Flooding to a property is not only devastating, but extremely expensive, as often the fabric of the property, such as plaster, dry walls, brick courses, flooring etc., need to be repaired or replaced. This is especially true if the water is contaminated. You should always ensure you have adequate flood cover in place through insurance.   

For further expert advice on flood insurance, how to ensure you have the best insurance, and what to do if it becomes too expensive, we recommend you visit one of our partner pages below:  
•    The Flood Hub – household insurance
•    The National Flood Forum - a charity organisation that supports people and communities at risk of flooding
•    ABI (The Association of British Insurers), is the UK's leading insurance industry body - a useful source of information to include how flooding/flood risk can affect your premiums.
•    Flood RE - a joint initiative between the Government and insurers to make flood cover part of household insurance policies more affordable. It also includes a ‘Build Back Better’ scheme, enabling householders to install property flood resilience measures up to the value of £10,000 when repairing their properties after a flood.

For businesses

As a business, it can be much harder for you to get comprehensive flood insurance for your business than it can be as a homeowner. 
There are many more variables you will need to consider as a business, such as the value of stock, specialist equipment and machinery, employee (or public) liability to cover those who work for you or might visit your business. You may also need to consider how flooding might impact your ability to fulfil contractual obligations with partners or clients.  

At present, businesses are not covered by the Flood RE scheme. 

For more information on business insurance:
•    The Flood Hub has an excellent page on flood insurance for businesses.  
•    The National Flood Forum are a charity organisation that supports people and communities at risk of flooding. They have a comprehensive guide for small businesses.  
•    ABI (The Association of British Insurers) is the UK's leading insurance industry body. They are a useful source of information and support in relation to flood insurance, policies and how flooding/flood risk can affect your premiums.