Fight the flood: How your business can prepare for flooding

By Eleanor Bailey

It’s the time of year for floods and storms: did you know that flooding is the most frequent natural disaster in the UK? The environment agency has estimated that 2.4 million properties in England are at risk of river or coastal flooding, 3 million properties are at risk of surface water flooding, and 600,000 of these are at risk of both!

The last thing any business owner needs is cost and disruption due to an uncontrollable event. Whilst you may not be able to prevent the inevitable, it’s certainly possible to fight back and limit the damage caused. To stop you getting super soggy, we asked our experts how you can prepare for floods and minimise damage to your business.

Here are our top tips for fighting the flood:

Risk assess

The best first step is to assess the risk of flooding to your business. An easy way to do this is to visit the Environment Agency’s find out if you're at risk of flooding page. You can sign up for free flood warnings there or get the flooding history records of a property.

If you’re a larger business, our My Account Plus portal comes with an integrated flood and weather warning tool that’ll give you tailored weather alerts for your sites from the same handy portal that’s monitoring your bills and water use.

If you decide you want a more in-depth assessment of flood risk, you could call in a professional who’ll identify areas you can improve on to protect your business better.

Make sure you're insured

Once you’ve assessed your risk of flood, you can make sure your business is adequately insured against it. Remember that most basic commercial property insurance doesn’t cover flooding or the loss of income that can result.

Limit the damage

There are certain things you can do now to prevent excess damage from a flood.

• Regularly maintain and clear out the gutters in/around your property, so they’re less likely to overflow or collapse.
• Clear out areas that accumulate leaves or dirt, to stop water pooling.
• Keep an eye on the drains near your property – if one often overflows when it rains, report it to your regional water wholesaler.
• Make sure you don’t have any leaks or damaged pipework. Our leak detection and repair service can help with this one!
• Consider moving ground floor electricals and precious items to a raised up position or higher floor, away from the potential water level.
• Back up all your important business information to a secure remote server, in case your in-office equipment is damaged. It’s also handy if your employees can remotely access their work files on this.
• Research flood-prevention products. There are lots of nifty temporary and permanent solutions out there.

Make a plan

Consider what might actually happen if, despite all your best efforts, your business was flooded. Do you know who to call first? Could your employees continue to work from home, or be temporarily relocated to another site? How would you alert your customers or suppliers? Knowing the answers to questions like these beforehand will save you time and reduce stress in case of the worst.

Once you’ve made a plan of action, don’t forget to make sure it’s easy to access and that managers and employees know about it.


If you found this blog useful, our Fresh Thinking Hub is bursting with more blogs for your business which you might also like!