People are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to flood risk, a shock survey has revealed.
The new survey has revealed that less than a quarter of people bother to check the flood risk before moving into a new home despite the widely publicised problem nationwide.
A YouGov survey by property data company Landmark Information Group reveals that only 23% of people checked flood risk before moving into their current home with a further 12% checking later as an after thought.
The figures are revealed only days after more than 100 flood alerts were issued – predominantly in Yorkshire – by the Environment Agency, following a deluge of a month’s worth of rain in just a matter of hours across the country.
The survey also found that just 6% of people have a flood plan and would know how to put it into action if they were flooded. More than a third (35%) admitted that they don’t have a flood plan at all.
The research went on to identify that there is serious confusion over who is responsible for protecting a home against flooding with 62% wrongly believing their local council has that responsibility.
Chris Loaring, managing director at Landmark Legal and Argyll Environmental said: “According to the Environment Agency over five million properties are at risk of flooding – of which 2.4 million properties are at risk from the sea or rivers and a larger share of 2.8 million properties are at risk of surface water flooding, which isn’t always visibly apparent.”
More and more people are preparing for floods 24/7 by having a stock of FloodSax alternative sand bags which are space-saving to store and quick and easy to deploy.
Once FloodSax come into contact with water they inflate to weigh 20kg (44lbs) which makes them more effective than traditional sandbags at keeping floodwater out.
More than 2.5 million have now been sold worldwide.
The best place to look for anti-flood devices is on a website run by the charity the National Flood Forum. There it has a list of products in a directory known as Blue Pages http://www.bluepages.org.uk/
Flood expert Mary Dhonau has produced an extensive Property Flood Resilience e-Book, which contains many case studies that focus on the steps people have taken to make their properties resilient to future flooding. This is available to download for free here: http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/pro...