Five ways to protect your business against flooding
Flooding
For any business flooding can cause significant emotional and financial repercussions. It has the potential to damage inventory and property, disrupt customers, supply chains and employees, lead to power outages and result in ongoing costs, such as temporary closure for repairs. In the UK, flood damage incurs an estimated annual cost of £1.3 billion. It’s estimated that this could increase by more than a fifth over the next century, so this is an increasing threat to your business.
Five step plan
While it’s impossible to completely eliminate the risk of flooding, you can effectively manage these risks by ensuring that your business is adequately prepared. Adopting a five-step approach, whilst obviously not being able to prevent a flood, can certainly help mitigate the damage and get your operations back to normal as quickly as possible.
Be aware of your flood risk
Whether you’ve operated from the same premises for years or recently relocated, make sure you understand the risk of flooding in your area.
Tip. Sign up for flood warnings. The Environment Agency issues free flood warnings to businesses if you have registered with it (see The next step ).
Adopt a flood plan
It’s crucial to have important information to hand during a emergency. Make sure your plan includes contact information for your energy providers, locations for gas and electricity service cut-off points and a list of immediate actions you can take in case of evacuation, such as moving stock and alerting staff.
Tip. Use our Flood Plan to assist in thinking through the potential consequences of flooding.Part of your flood plan may be to purchase flood barriers and other measures or even invest in flood-resistant property upgrades. Preparing a flood plan will help your business case when it comes to seeking funding for these measures.
Be proactive if you receive warnings
Don’t just wait for the flood waters to rise and cause damage. If you are alerted to a potential threat, there are some actions you can take immediately, including:
- moving equipment to a higher level
- regularly backing up data and files
- raising your white goods on a plinth
- moving electrical sockets and wiring higher up.
Business continuity plan
The scope of a business continuity plan is to provide a flexible response so that your operations can respond to a disruptive incident such as a flood, maintain delivery of critical activities/services during an incident and return to “business as usual”. Make sure you include the potential for flooding in your plan.
Check your level of insurance
The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has an insurance scheme aimed at improving access to flood insurance for small businesses in flood risk areas (see The next step ). Tip. Talk to your current insurer to check your cover.
For our links to flood alerts, our flood plan and BIBA, visit https://www.tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 22 issue 10.
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