With the recent events of Storm Christoph and Storm Darcy, we’re sure flooding is on everyone’s mind – especially if you have had the misfortune to have been flooded in the past, or know someone who has.
The Defra funded South West Property Flood Resilience (PFR) Pathfinder, is being led by Cornwall Council and supported by JBA Consulting and Devon Communities Together. Working in partnership with the Environment Agency and Risk Management Authorities across the South West, this project aims to support individuals, businesses and communities at flood risk.
The Pathfinder focusses around Property Flood Resilience, or PFR for short. In a nutshell, PFR means:
Helping mitigate flood risk to people and property, enabling households and businesses to reduce the damage caused by floods and speed up recovery and reoccupation.
PFR includes both:
- Resistance Measures: These can be fitted to a property, forming a physical barrier between the flood water and the building. These measures aim to reduce the amount of water entering the building, thereby reducing the damage caused internally.
- Resilience Measures: These are used to adapt the internal property, aiming to limit the damage caused if water does enter a building. These measures allow the clean-up and repair process to occur quickly, improving the recovery process.
The South West PFR Pathfinder, which is one of three projects taking place across the UK, is focussed on helping households and businesses understand their flood risk and the actions they can take to protect their properties from flooding.
In September 2020, we launched our BeFloodReady campaign. Our website www.befloodready.uk offers professional PFR advice and guidance, helping individuals, businesses and communities to BeFloodReady.
On social media, we kicked things off by supporting #30days30ways, empowering actions towards individual and community emergency preparedness and resilience. Follow us on Twitter @BeFloodReady to find out more.
Currently we are busy preparing:
- Business workshops: For businesses, please check out our online 1-hour workshops at Homepage - BeFloodReady
- BeFloodReady PFRBluePrint – our e-learning and digital library is coming soon. PFR has been interpreted and delivered in so many ways, and this has not always been helpful. With our BluePrint we aim to change this by providing training and best practice for organisations and individuals and provide a PFR BluePrint on what you need to do and the order you need to do it in to deliver effective PFR.
- Demonstration Site: We are working with Heartlands, a visitor attraction and World Heritage Site in Redruth, to develop a PFR Demonstration Site. This will be a place where ‘seeing is believing’ and groups can come and see PFR in action.
- PFR Workshops – In collaboration with Cornwall Community Flood Forum and Devon Community Resilience Forum, we are planning future PFR workshops where community groups can come and find out more about PFR, taking key information back to their communities. Workshops for businesses at flood risk are also being planned.
- PFR Resources – We have designed a PFR Information Booklet in collaboration with Communities Prepared. This resource will be used within the workshops, on the tour and will be available digitally on the BeFloodReady website.
- Surface water flood risk maps – We have produced surface water flood maps for both Devon and Cornwall, showing the impacts of climate change. As well as being available to view online, we will be able to display these on the FloodPod so do come along and visit us!
- The FloodPod – Once we are allowed, we will be taking our FloodPod on tour across the South West, visiting communities at flood risk and discussing all things PFR. Find out more here.
For more information on PFR please contact Janica Birch, Project Manager at: Janica.birch@devoncommunities.org.uk
