Flood risk assessment in property transactions

Flood risk is a significant material consideration in any property transaction, residential or commercial. The flood events of the summer 2007 are estimated to have cost £6 billion in damages.

Beyond damages to property, other significant issues can include threats to human health and safety, displacement of communities and business interruption.

The data utilised in flood risk assessments is becoming ever more sophisticated. Advances in data quality and the manner in which this information is used means that flood searches represent a highly cost effective first line of defense in assessing these risks.

Flood risk data is gathered by the Environment Agency. The EA identifies various types of risk:

• River flooding, when a river or smaller watercourse overflows due to heavy rain falls.
• Coastal flooding, when a tidal surge is created by a combination of high tides and stormy weather.
• Surface water flooding, when heavy rain falls exceed the ground drainage capacity
•  Groundwater flooding, when water contained in the ground rise above the surface level; this is likely to happen in areas of permeable rocks (chalk, sandstone).

GroundSure not only provides flood risk searches but chooses to combine this data into premium traditional environmental search reports meaning that instead of purchasing separate environmental and flood risk searches a single report can be used to cover both of these.

We include a flood risk search in the following  environmental search reports: GroundSure Homebuyers for residential properties, GroundSure Review for commercial properties.

           

Visit other Emap Built Environment sites