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Flood risk survey: Inside Housing examines 50 housing associations’ ESG reports
Adil Hassan examines the environmental, social and governance reports of the top 50 Biggest Builders to identify their flood risk strategies, and talks to experts about what housing associations can do to prepare for the future
Adil Hassan examines the ESG reports of the top 50 biggest builders to identify their flood risk strategies, and talks to experts about what housing associations can do to prepare for the future #UKhousingOutside the Inside Housing office sits Canary Wharf, a nexus of skyscrapers and buildings on the site of West India Quay, formerly one of the busiest docks in the world.
Its days as a thriving shipping hub may be behind it, but the water remains, with orange lifebuoys dotting the railings overlooking the various quaysides, alongside signs bearing the warning ‘DANGER DEEP WATER’.
It is a warning that is increasingly flagged on our readers’ risk registers too. One in six UK homes are currently at flood risk, around 6.3 million. By 2050 this will rise to one in four homes, eight million in total, according to the Environment Agency’s predictions.
As the consequences of climate change worsen, sea levels will rise, and more extreme weather events will combine to expose more homes across the UK to flooding.
Housing associations will need a long-term strategy to mitigate the risk to their homes. This point was underlined towards the end of last year, when the FloodReady independent taskforce published an action plan for flood resilience in property.
The National Housing Federation is part of the leadership group of FloodReady, so perhaps it will be no surprise that the report includes specific recommendations for social landlords to “develop clear and co-ordinated strategies to prepare for and mitigate flood risk for their tenants and homes”.
The report also sees a role for social landlords in implementing property flood resilience measures, and foresees the piloting across housing of a new “Flood Protection Certificate” for properties, similar to an Energy Performance Certificate.
All this begs the question: how are the UK’s biggest housing providers preparing now, and what more could they be doing?
To find out, we looked at the environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports of the top 50 Biggest Builders from last year to see what flood risk strategies they have in place and what actions they are taking.
Riverside’s ESG report notes: “We believe that a proactive, joined-up approach to climate resilience is not only vital for Riverside, but for the housing sector as a whole. This is why we participate in sector-wide forums, where flood risk is regularly discussed and best practices on mitigating risks are shared amongst other providers.”
Inside Housing is sharing the results of our analysis with the same aim, to highlight best practice and to allow landlords to learn from one another.
The first step for any housing association is to assess flood risk across its area and portfolio. Several of the 50 associations we looked into already included details of flood risk assessments in their ESG reports.
For example, Jigsaw’s 2024-25 ESG report said it had appointed an external consultant to carry out an extreme weather assessment of its entire property portfolio. In addition to flooding, this will produce data on exposure to strong winds, drought and overheating.
Vivid’s report from the previous year provided additional detail about how it has approached risk assessment by looking to assess and respond to risk at scale. Its methodology is structured around three key elements: hazard, vulnerability and exposure.
The framework helps the association to understand physical climate events and shows how susceptible its homes are to flooding. Vivid used consultants to help it identify which homes are likely to face increased hazards.
Andy Piper, head of sustainability at Vivid, says: “By improving our risk assessments, we’re better equipped to protect our customers and ensure the long-term sustainability of their homes.”
Data-mapping
To map risk across their areas and portfolio, a data-driven approach can help housing providers to understand how many of the homes they own are in potential danger and enhance flood resilience.
In its 2023-24 report, Accent explained that it was gathering flood risk data on its existing properties via the Environment Agency’s long-term projection maps, and planned to introduce flood risk levels into its property database. The data was to be shared internally to devise a risk management approach so that any homes at risk of flooding could be protected.
By its 2024-25 report, the housing association had also undertaken an analysis of its stock by the consultancy SHIFT, which found that “83.3% of our housing stock was at low risk of flooding”.
The Guinness Partnership has a flood management system that draws on several data sources, including satellite imagery and weather forecasts to provide warnings where properties may be at risk of flooding.
In 2023-24, Thirteen gauged the future flood risk of its properties across low, medium and high emissions scenarios over set periods of time to develop a long-term flood risk strategy.
Hyde used geographic information systems mapping to understand the flood risk of all its homes. It used data-mapping of its areas of operations to give each property a flood risk score, factoring in the severity, likelihood and frequency of flooding.
In our analysis of the top 50 Biggest Builders’ ESG reports, we found that 10% of providers made specific reference to flood risk alerts.
Southern, for example, signed up to a flood warning service for tailored alerts of surface water flooding in the next 24 hours.
Your Housing Group subscribes to the Previsico flood alert system, which provides 48-hour advance alerts for flood risks to its homes. These alerts are classified according to a low, medium and high risk scale.
Places for People has also implemented the Previsico flood alert system for its housing stock. Its ESG report provides some fascinating detail about the current state of play, never mind the future. More than 200 alerts were responded to throughout the 2023-24 financial year.
“Alerts were disseminated across the group and our frontline colleagues were made aware of potential flooding so they could support our customers and minimise disruption,” the report says.
In a sign of the growing seriousness of this issue, for 2024-25, Places for People moved reporting on its flooding responses from its ESG report to a climate risk section of its financial report (though its most recent report does not include flood reports data).
‘One-stop shop’
According to a survey by the British Red Cross, nearly half of those who have experienced flooding in their home in the past five years were not aware of any flooding information in their area.
Knowing the risks is essential, and if that knowledge isn’t communicated with residents in good time, floods will cause more damage than necessary. So how can housing associations help?
One association, at least, details an approach which sees it take responsibility for an entire region. Together Housing’s subsidiary Newground CIC has a project called The Flood Hub, which it says acts as a “one-stop shop” for communities across the North West of England. It offers a wide range of flood resilience support to individuals and communities to help them better understand their flood risk and plan for future flood events.
Together works with relevant local authorities where appropriate around flood risk and resilience. The risk of floods, drought and severe weather are covered in its risk register, which it reviews annually. Flooding advice – including how to prepare for a flood, as well as health and safety precautions – is shared with residents on its website, and if an imminent flood risk is identified, this is communicated promptly to residents.
Dr Carola Koenig, a member of Brunel University’s Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience, says: “It should be a duty of a housing association to prepare their residents.”
And she suggests that, because of the likelihood of more extreme weather events, providers with homes in traditionally low-risk flood areas shouldn’t rest easy. “Nobody can, we’ve got to prepare. Weather systems are changing so much we can’t predict for certain that a heavy rain event won’t fall into a low-risk area at the moment. I think they would be advised to start preparing for it regardless.
“This means preparedness of the residents, what to do in the event of being flooded, because often people are being caught out in the moment.”
Mitigation efforts
Our survey of ESG reports found that housing associations are already implementing some mitigation measures to improve flood resilience in their areas. These include:
Sustainable drainage systems
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) provide an alternative to the direct channelling of surface water through networks of pipes and sewers to nearby watercourses. By mimicking natural drainage, they reduce surface water flooding by lowering flow rates and increasing water storage capacity.
Last summer, the government published detailed standards for SuDS on new developments, but stopped short of making them mandatory.
Ahead of this, some housing associations are already embracing SuDS. Eastlight argues all drainage should be SuDS wherever site conditions permit. Midland Heart installs SuDS to manage surface water in its new build schemes, while Places for People implements them across several projects, to enhance biodiversity while reducing flood risk.
All new Peabody estates have SuDS to help with the damage caused by sustained rainfall in urban areas.
Rain gardens
LiveWest invested in versatile, multi-purpose blue and green infrastructure, such as rain gardens to manage surface water run-off, while providing recreational amenity space and promoting biodiversity within its developments.
Natural roofs
To mitigate flood risk, natural roofs manage stormwater by lowering flow rates. Notting Hill Genesis provides rainwater attenuation to reduce surface water run-off rates into the sewers.
Typical rainwater attenuation measures include green roofs (with plants on), brown roofs (covered in a growing medium and left to be naturally colonised by local species, such as wildflowers) and blue roofs (a system designed to temporarily store rainwater and release it later in a controlled fashion).
Rainwater attenuation can also include soakaways, permeable paving and attenuation tanks. The rainwater that lands on buildings and landscaped areas is stored and released slowly into the sewer network. This reduces the influx of water into the sewers and local watercourses and lessens the risk of flooding downstream.
“Installing rain gardens for flooding and having natural roofs where possible in order to delay flow is a sensible measure, because it may at least shift the peak of the flow to a large degree, and as a result might mitigate some of these extreme events,” Dr Koenig says.
Attenuation ponds
WHG uses natural attenuation ponds to reduce water run-off to the local watercourses and prevent localised flooding events, while encouraging habitat growth.
Swales/dry basins
Great Places and Accent both use swales or balancing ponds and basins to reduce discharge rates through natural attenuation of rainwater. Swales are shallow areas, usually covered with grass or vegetation, that collect rainwater and let it slowly soak away into the soil. Balancing ponds are usually larger artificial ponds that fill up with water run-off when it rains.
Accent incorporates attenuation ponds, swales and dry basins to address the climate risk of flooding, while enhancing natural habitats.
Permeable paving
WHG employed permeable paving across two projects to reduce the effects of rainwater run-off on all surfaces.
Other flood resilience mitigations
L&Q invests in resilience measures for homes most vulnerable to flooding by installing flood doors, which create a seal and prevent water from entering, and flood-proof air bricks. Onward delivered flood defence measures such as smart air bricks, new retaining fences and flood gates. Yorkshire Housing’s recent developments have included flood barriers, raised foundations and smart air bricks.
Annisa Sekaringtias, programme manager at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), suggests other measures housing providers should be considering.
These include installing electrical sockets and boilers higher off the floor, sealing gaps around pipes and doorframes, and ensuring proper drainage and landscaping.
“Installing these property flood resilience measures has been found to be very cost-effective, with each £1 spent providing a £5 saving on future damages,” she says.
Dr Robyn Pender is a building physicist who used to advise Historic England’s climate change adaptation team. Now, she runs a consultancy with her husband called Whethergauge.
She says that different wall renders can be crucial. Replacing cement-based renders and mortars with lime-based can help, because lime renders are more flood-resilient and allow moisture absorbed during a flood to evaporate through them.
“When the walls were rendered in a lime-based mortar, it looked to have a really positive effect,” Dr Pender says. “This is a simple and effective retrofit that will really help.”
She distinguishes between ‘greatcoats’ and ‘raincoats’: “In solid-wall ‘greatcoats’ the raindrops are held in surface pores, and don’t penetrate further. The water doesn’t course down the surface and quickly evaporates.
“Just like a greatcoat, if you wear it out in the rain, the outside might feel very wet, but the inside stays dry.
“In ‘raincoats’ the water isn’t held in the surface pores, but rather beads, collects and runs down the surface as a flow. Water runs down and wicks through cracks and joints.
“In terms of water resistance, whether to rain or flooding, greatcoats win hands down. They also win out when it comes to resilience – the ability to recover after a bad event.
“The ‘hollow’ wall construction of raincoat envelopes lets in the floodwater and contaminants, and it is really, really hard to get rid of them. Whereas a greatcoat is really robust: it will be perfectly recoverable even after prolonged and serious neglect.”
As climate change progresses, the experts argue there will be a greater need to move beyond mitigation measures and focus more on adaptation. Dr Koenig believes it is not just a matter of defending properties and being prepared.
“Increasingly, we need to adapt our properties to be resilient,” she warns. “We can’t avoid these floods completely, they will happen, but we can prepare such that we are operational again much quicker than we have been in the past.”
“Integrated approaches to retrofit that consider evolving risks are essential to avoid costly lock-in and ensure year-round comfort”
To prepare for an unforeseen flooding event, for example, ground-floor flats should be tiled up to one metre in height to avoid the excessive damage many flooded properties have suffered over the past few years.
Raising the entry of a home makes it easier to recover if there is a flood. “We can sweep, clean up, take a hose, flush the mud out that has been entering the property, drying it out such that we are quickly back to normal,” Dr Koenig says.
Flood risk is a key consideration for Great Places when it plans new developments and estate designs. All new homes are built to limit risk of flooding to the least severe category of flood zone 1 (0.1%), with floor levels raised and areas with increased flood risk left as public open space.
Ranking her top-three most important flood strategies, Dr Koenig says: “Changing the infrastructure of the ground level of these properties as quickly as possible in order to be flood-ready is one of the main measures, in my view, in order to be operational again. Preparing the residents for the event of flooding. Natural flood measures.”
As for existing homes, CISL’s report The Business Case for Integrated Retrofit argues that retrofitting for adaptation is a strategic investment that will ultimately save housing providers more money than they spend.
Ms Sekaringtias says: “Reactive strategies risk underinvestment and repeated retrofits. Assessing risks across emissions scenarios helps ensure homes are resilient across future climates. Integrated approaches to retrofit that consider evolving risks are essential to avoid costly lock-in and ensure year-round comfort.”
Another factor is subsidence. Ms Sekaringtias states that the “increase in temperature is impacting the risk of subsidence as extreme heat causes soil to dry out and shrink. Housing associations should factor it into their considerations as a part of an integrated retrofit approach.”
“A further 2.4 million homes are projected to be at risk of subsidence in 2030,” she adds, citing research by the British Geological Survey.
The interplay between flooding and subsidence poses a serious threat to the built environment, so housing associations will need to factor sinking foundations into their calculations of flood risk to adapt accordingly.
Last year, The Guardian estimated that 100,000 homes could be built in areas at risk of flooding. Could some of these new homes prove to be uninsurable?
“That shouldn’t happen. It’s a mistake, a big error of planning, it shouldn’t be allowed because the risk is known and the disaster that will come as a result can be predicted,” Dr Koenig says.
The Flood Re scheme, a joint government and industry reinsurance initiative, currently makes insurance in flood-prone areas more affordable and easier to access. Its accounts for 2024-25 state that it provides the backstop insurance for 346,200 properties, offering £3.2bn of protection to the domestic market.
“Uninsurable homes are no longer theoretical, they are already appearing on the map. Without resilience measures, there is a risk that the protection gap will widen, especially for low-income households”
However, this agreement is due to expire in 2039 and so far it is unclear what will happen after that date. If the agreement is not renewed, homes at risk of flooding could become uninsurable.
Ms Sekaringtias says: “Rising premiums and exclusions in high-risk areas could make homes uninsurable, affecting mortgage compliance and property values.
“In the US, Australia and New Zealand, uninsurable homes are no longer theoretical, they are already appearing on the map. Without resilience measures, there is a risk that the protection gap will widen, especially for low-income households.”
Dr Sanna Markkanen, head of policy at CISL, speaks of the need for “better building standards that do not focus only on resilience to heat, cold or floods, but consider the property more holistically, seeking to improve resilience to all three”.
In its recent report, CISL recommended exploring how the Energy Performance Certificate, which estimates energy bills and carbon emissions from each home, could be extended to address health and climate risk, giving a clearer picture for households, housing providers and financial institutions of what constitutes a climate-adapted home.
And the FloodReady report also included an array of recommendations, with a 10-year plan for implementation. One of the most striking proposals is the Flood Performance Certificate. This is a proposal being worked up by the reinsurer Flood Re, with the individual homeowner in mind.
“It tells a householder what could happen if there is a flood, and what level of flood water will cause what damage to their home,” according to a presentation by Flood Re. Andy Bord, former chief executive of Flood Re, wrote that this “enables individual householders to understand their flood risk, reduce it and then demonstrate this protection to others”.
The FloodReady report comes with a roadmap that envisages that within 10 years, these certificates would be “normal and used as a benchmark for protecting people and properties from climate-related... impact”.
How one landlord is approaching flood risk
Riverside argues that it is “critical for all housing providers to develop a long-term plan for a flood-resilient future.
“Monitoring climate risk enables us to plan ahead, act responsibly and build resilience into our homes and services, ensuring we continue to provide safe, secure and sustainable housing.”
The housing association’s flood action plan sets out a structured, three-phase approach designed to prepare for, respond to and recover from flooding events.
“A robust flood action plan not only protects physical assets but more importantly ensures the well-being of our customers, reduces long-term repair and insurance costs, and strengthens community resilience.”
Preparation
This includes annual inspections of all properties to ensure they remain resilient, and annual training for teams so they are well prepared to respond to flood season.
Up-to-date contact lists aid effective communication during emergencies, so that customers, particularly those in high-risk flood areas, are informed about tailored evacuation plans.
Met Office flood alerts are monitored to stay ahead of potential threats and allow swift action.
Response
When a flood is declared a high-level emergency, Riverside activates a co-ordinated response involving internal teams and external partners to protect properties, support evacuations and meet customers’ immediate needs – ensuring localised, effective action when it’s needed most.
Once a flood alert is received, defences are deployed such as sandbags and other physical barriers to protect vulnerable locations.
Dedicated helplines are set up and Riverside co-ordinates evacuations with emergency services and local authorities, meeting immediate needs through the provision of supplies including food and water. Utilities are isolated to prevent further hazards and emergency repair crews begin restoration.
Throughout the response, customers, colleagues and partners are informed with real-time updates, while insurance teams kick-start the repair process by documenting any damage. This joined-up approach helps Riverside remain resilient in the face of flooding.
Recovery
Recovery efforts focus on supporting affected customers, restoring homes and managing insurance claims, while providing ongoing communication and well-being support.
Once floodwaters recede, Riverside focuses on assessing and repairing damage, offering temporary or permanent rehousing, as well as giving advice and practical assistance throughout the reinstatement process.
“By investing in preventative measures, emergency preparedness and recovery strategies now, housing associations can safeguard their homes and services for decades to come,” the association says.
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