Exposure
•  Students are the professionals of the future. The author makes a point of giving guest lectures to students taking courses in town and country planning, architecture, and in building standards, to inform them about the importance of adapting to climate change. He also writes articles for the journals of the relevant professional institutes and speaks at their national conferences. The whole education process could be speeded up if the professional institutes and other relevant authorities could review course work and the syllabus for these disciplines, preferably with input from insurance experts. There needs to be an increased awareness of the issues in environmental management courses as well.

•  Flood Liaison and Advice Groups should be given some form of statutory recognition all over Britain so that they have a role as part of the legislation being introduced as a result of the Water Framework Directive. The EA could actively promote the establishment of Flood Liaison and Advice Groups in England and Wales with insurance representation as in Scotland . These groups should ideally be established on a catchment basis where appropriate, and include representatives from all stakeholders, including adjoining local authorities, housebuilders, developers and insurers etc - again as in Scotland. Flood Liaison and Advice Groups could be encouraged to issue "certificates of conformity" for new property developments where the development conforms to the Insurance Template. This would ensure that the purchasers of such properties could obtain flood insurance at normal terms, and would safeguard property values.

•  The insurance industry and the EA should work together to reduce the number of new houses being built in flood hazard areas. Since the first edition of this technical report, the EA now uses "Target 12" requirements from its high level targets to pass information to insurers about cases where they have objected to a new development on the grounds of flood risk. The ABI and the Council of Mortgage Lenders then write a joint letter to the local authority concerned to warn of possible insurance problems. They should also work together to alert valuation surveyors and individual insurers. Surveyors could reflect the risk in their valuations and underwriters would be able to take it into account when deciding whether to offer cover for those properties. This might well mean that no insurance cover would be available in many cases, and the developers would find the new houses hard to sell since mortgages would be not be available either.

•  The next step would be to persuade planners that there is no point in allowing a new housing development to take place in a flood zone if no one will buy the houses due to insurance problems. Where possible, planners should adopt the insurance template as an integral part of their structure plans, as in many parts of Scotland . However, it is not realistic to expect that the template can be applied throughout the south-east of England , given the lack of suitable land and the pressure for new housing. In such cases, planners and building control need to work together as recommended by the Select Committee to ensure that the new houses are more resilient to flood.

•  Insurers should lobby the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to reconsider the targets given to planners for new house building in their areas. If a council has no land left other than floodplain, it should not be forced by government targets to allow building in those areas. It is these targets which are perhaps primarily responsible for the growth in floodplain development. Insurers should also lobby the ODPM to be allowed to offer assistance with the new policy on selecting growth sub regions to ensure that the government is aware of flood or subsidence hazard areas that might have insurance problems.

•  It is appreciated that there is a high and growing demand for building land, but why do most of these houses have to be built in the South East of England? Government could introduce increased incentives for businesses to move from London to other parts of the country where "new towns" could be created in safer areas. For businesses that insist on remaining in London , better transport links and greater use of electronic working at home would still enable staff to live further away. UK government could start with its own departments and agencies. The Scottish Executive already has a policy of moving the head offices of its agencies out of Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example.

•  If someone wishes to live in a flood hazard area, they should be made fully aware of the hazards. Signs should be erected in accordance with the recommendations of the 1995 Scottish Planning Guidelines so that prospective purchasers are also aware of the hazards.

•  If the government wishes the insurance industry to continue to provide cover on an interim basis for such floodplain and coastal exposure, it would first have to consider modifying the risk-based strategy of the insurance regulator, the FSA, to allow insurers to accumulate such exposures. This might require the government to offer to provide support in the event of a major disaster. This would be preferable to the blight that might be caused by a lack of insurance cover.

•  Valuation surveyors should be encouraged and enabled to give more detailed information than at present about flood hazards in their survey reports and should receive guidance about ways to reflect the flood hazard in the valuations placed on the property. (The RICS are already researching this.) Surveyors and solicitors should be required to explain the implications of an increasing flood hazard to prospective purchasers, who would then be obliged under insurance laws on disclosure of material facts to declare such information when seeking insurance. Failure to disclose such information could result in their claims being repudiated. If this happens due to professional negligence on the part of the surveyor, there may be a case against the surveyor's professional indemnity insurance.

•  Managed retreat and realignment may have to become more widespread, and measures may be needed to provide fair compensation to people living in these areas (compensation for such people is not government policy at present).

•  Government should have a programme of compulsory purchase of floodplain land in sensitive areas to ensure it is properly managed.

Government talk a great deal about issues such as social justice and sustainable development. Putting social housing in flood hazard areas satisfies neither of these principles and puts life and livelihoods at risk.

In Ontario , Canada , there is a very simple system. Areas where the flood hazard is greater than one in 200 are mapped. Areas of recorded historic flood are added. For the last 30 years, local communities have been forbidden to allow new development in such areas except in very special circumstances, and do not spend any money on new flood defences there, other than to protect evacuation routes. People living in these areas are permitted to stay but can at any time sell their property, provided they sell it to the community. The community will pay a fair market price for the property and then demolish it.

While these practices may seem extreme to people living in Britain , it should be remembered that flood insurance is not available at all for homes in Canada . Over a 30-year period most residents and businesses have been happy to sell up, and relatively few buildings are left in the floodplain.

The author toured one such community, in London , Ontario , as the guest of the Thames River Conservation Authority in 2001, and was very impressed with the beautiful public parks and recreation areas in the centre of the City next to the Thames River . It was hard to believe that these areas had once been covered with housing and industrial buildings. Could such a policy be introduced in London , England ?

Figure 14 The Thames River in the centre of London , Ontario , showing the contrast between structural and non-structural solutions. On the left bank is a 30 year old flood defence which is not maintained but has been left in place for safety reasons because there are still some houses and a sports stadium behind it. On the right bank all the buildings in the hazard zone have been removed and the area has been landscaped for flood storage and recreation.

The Ontario solution is not unique. In 1997, the Red River flooded the city of Grand Forks in North Dakota , USA . Almost immediately after the flood, the city identified the properties damaged by the flood, and began to purchase them and demolish them. Around 100 were demolished before the official purchase had been completed, in order to prevent them being re-occupied. The USA devotes special federal funds to purchase a property that has been damaged by flooding, and this is subject to a "green clause" which requires that the land be left vacant in perpetuity, in order to prevent future damage and to provide flood storage. In all, the city has purchased over 800 homes and 42 commercial properties since 1997. Many of these properties were jacked up and loaded onto lorries to be taken to safe areas, in a process called "managed relocation". Where this was not possible, or where properties were badly damaged, they were demolished. The city has also made many of the remaining properties flood resistant, and has embarked on new flood defence works behind the area of demolished properties. The total cost of the project is $580 million. (Managed relocation is more difficult in Britain owing to the nature of traditional construction methods, although it has been carried out successfully in isolated cases.)

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