Following the anniversary of the June 2007 summer floods, people in Britain are still not checking the flood risk of their homes, in spite of increased incidents of flooding in recent years. 67% of respondents to a new YouGov survey, which was commissioned by the Know Your Flood Risk Campaign, reports that they had never checked the flood risk level of their home.
Adults in the Yorkshire and Humber region were mid-range of the list for failing to check flood risk in a new YouGov survey commissioned by the Know Your Flood Risk Campaign. 69% of adults in the region admitted to not checking their flood risk, despite major floods occurring in areas such as Knaresborough, Harrogate, Wakefield, Collingham and York during the summer floods of 2007.
Despite this worrying statistic and an increased risk of flooding across the UK they did fair rather better than their North East counterparts where 88% of households failed to check. This compares to 55% for those in the South East, which has also bared the brunt of significant flooding events – including last year when January 2014 was reported as the wettest January on record, which resulted in over 100 flood warnings being issued in the South East region alone.
The survey also shows that many do not take the threat of a flood seriously with just 8% of respondents from the region confirming that they have a flood plan and are sure of what they would do if a flood occurred in their homes. Worryingly, just over a quarter of people (26%) reported that they do not have a plan and would not know what to do in the event of a flood, while 53% said they do not have a flood plan but thought they would know what to do if a flood occurred.
The survey identifies that the public are still not making flood checks part of their research process when moving into a new home; just 19% of respondents currently check the flood risk of their home before moving in, and only 9% check after.
The research went on to identify that there is confusion over who is responsible for protecting a home against flooding. Respondents considered a range of organisations that they believe have a responsibility to protect homes against flooding including the Environment Agency (57%), their local council (62%) and the Government (39%), homeowners (56%), landlords (40%) and tenants (19%) were also noted as being responsible for protecting a home against flooding.
Mary Dhonau OBE, Chief Executive of the Know Your Flood Risk campaign, said: “People have short memories just three years ago in 2012 we had the second wettest summer on record and during the summer of 2007; 55,000 properties were flooded. With such wide-scale media coverage of the devastation that significant flood events cause, it’s surprising that that the public are not doing their homework when it comes to protecting their homes.”
www.knowyourfloodrisk.co.uk
