Last Friday the DEFRA/Industry Flood Action Round Table took place by video link. As usual with these things, the technology took a while to warm up but with a very good number of attendees, under the control of the new chairman of the group Dermott Kehoe of FloodRe, the meeting happened and it did manage to report on a number of matters.

Code of Practice Explanatory Notes Delayed

Most notably for members, attendees were informed that although the very short version of the Code of Practice for Property Flood Resilience has been launched, the explanatory notes that are thought to run to hundreds of pages will not be ready until later in the year.

Your Association remains part of the conversation

We did highlight that some surveyors are claiming to be able to deliver the service in accordance with the requirements of the CIRIA code today, but that we have seen some of these submissions which we felt fell far short of the what is expected by the code. Following this, there was a good debate about training and certification of professionals, and the PCA volunteered to take part in these further conversations.

Are ‘Flood Protection Certificates’ on the horizon?

The other notable matter of business was the review of a report commissioned by FloodRe and compiled by WPI Economics, that looked into the feasibility of providing “Flood Protection Certificates”. This paper, created by independent consultants, raises the idea of regulatory changes to drive the adoption of high-quality flood adaptations.

Unfortunately, we have not yet seen the full version of the document, but the summary was very exciting. In short, many of the things that the professional flood protection industry has been lobbying for seem to manifest in the report.

We very much hope this high level of work starts to influence policy going forward.

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