Protecting your property is a key part of helping to reduce the impact of flooding on your home or business.

Whilst you can never entirely eliminate the risk of flooding, protecting your property can be a key part of helping to reduce the impact of flooding on your home or business. 

What is Property Level Protection?

Property Level Protection (PLP), which is also referred to as property level resilience, are measures that can be taken to reduce the impact of flooding.  They can be categorised into the following two groups:

• Flood resilience is about reducing the damage to the inside of your property once water has got in and speeding up the time it takes to recover after a flood.

Such measures that can be taken include using porous plaster, fitting solid floors or tiled floor coverings, raising electrics to preserve the electricity supply and taking simple steps in a flood event to move furniture and valuable possessions upstairs to lessen the damage flood water can cause.

The aim is to ensure that if your home or business is flooded, you can get back up and running as soon as possible.  For example, fixtures and fittings are chosen so that they can easily be moved out of the way, whilst walls and floors can be quickly washed down.

• Flood resistance measures involve trying to stop the water entering the property in the first place. These can usually be fitted to the outside of a property to prevent or limit the flood water getting in and can include flood boards, air brick covers, non-return valves and pumps, as well as work to ensure that the fabric of the property is sound.