Pathfinder: Property Flood Resilience
The Defra funded South West Property Flood Resilience (PFR) Pathfinder, was 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 aimed to support individuals, businesses and communities at flood risk.
Be Flood Ready - Missy's tale
Flooding often takes people by surprise. This Aardman Animations film, told from the perspective of Missy the cat, shows how flooding can quickly affect your home. Find out how you can make yourself flood ready - BeFloodReady | Property Flood Resilience (PFR) | Helping reduce flood risk
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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, 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 keep up to date.
Activities will included:
- Business workshops
- Demonstration Site: We worked with Heartlands, a visitor attraction and World Heritage Site in Redruth, to develop a PFR Demonstration Site; 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 planned PFR workshops where community groups came to find out more about PFR, taking key information back to their communities. Workshops for businesses at flood risk also took place.
- PFR Resources – We designed a PFR Information Booklet in collaboration with Communities Prepared. This resource was used within the workshops, on the tour and is available digitally on the BeFloodReady website.
- Surface water flood risk maps – We produced surface water flood maps for both Devon and Cornwall, showing the impacts of climate change.
- The FloodPod – We took our FloodPod on tour across the South West, visiting communities at flood risk and discussing all things PFR. Find out more here.
The importance of community planning video
