Independent review
Completed
Improving property level flood resilience: Bonfield 2016 action plan
This action plan sets out how businesses can make it easier for people to protect their homes from damage from flood water.
Government Response
No formal government response published. The Property Flood Resilience Action Plan, chaired by Dr Peter Bonfield, is classified by gov.uk as an independent report (published 8 September 2016) and is itself the implementation product, setting out the recommendations and actions of the Defra-convened Property Level Flood Resilience Roundtable. It carries a ministerial foreword and was endorsed and published by Defra, but the Government did not issue a separate response to it.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
Strengthening understanding of what measures are best to adopt. More needs to be done to address the significant confusion that remains about what property level resilience actually is. We need greater clarity on which measures are most effective, recognising that every property is different.
Those promoting the approach need to be clear who the target audiences are and design simple messages to reach them. They must consider the 'PLR customer journey' and the channels / touch points through which we can reach them.
Those promoting the approach need to be clear who the target audiences are and design simple messages to reach them. They must consider the 'PLR customer journey' and the channels / touch points through which we can reach them.
Recommendation 2
Improving the skill sets of those involved in making properties more resilient. We need appropriate training programmes for those who have a role in promoting and delivering resilient repair. Surveyors require particular attention, along with installers of resilient measures.
Recommendation 3
Normalising property level protection in the commercial world. There is a need for greater awareness across the commercial sector – both for those who would directly benefit from installing PLR measures (e.g. business owners, landlords) and those who drive consumer interest (lenders, insurers and loss adjusters). Evidence will be key to acceptance.
Recommendation 4
Action following a flood event. We should all learn lessons from this and previous occasions where PLR has been used without capacity building immediately following a flood event. The Task Group will be feeding in the lessons it is learning from the pilots it is running in three local authority areas into the Government's own review of flood recovery schemes used last winter.
No recommendations with this response.