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Property flood resilience grant scheme

Property flood resilience (PFR) grant scheme

Flooded property owners can apply for up to £5,000 via the Government's Flood Recovery Framework to help make their homes and businesses more resilient to future flooding.

The government uses the Flood Recovery Framework to make funding available to communities following specific storm events that result in severe flooding. One of the elements of this framework is the Property Flood Resilience (PFR) Grant which the government requires Suffolk County Council to administer on their behalf.

The council has launched PFR Grant application process for properties affected by Storm Babet in October 2023. The following has been prepared as a brief summary to outline the government guidelines of the scheme.

Who can apply for this funding?

Grants are only available to people who suffered internal flood damage to their homes or businesses during Storm Babet (between 19-25 October 2023). They are in addition to grants and Council Tax/Business Rate discounts that may have been received from District Councils. Eligible property owners can apply for up to £5,000 (including VAT) to help make their property more resilient to future flooding. Properties that have already reported flooding via the Highways Reporting Tool and have been determined as eligible for this grant will be contacted directly by letter or email and invited to complete the application process. You have until the end of April 2025 to make an application.

All property owners that wish to apply for the grant will require a survey to be carried out by an independent, qualified building surveyor (must be independent from any company that installs PFR measures) who has completed the training CIWEM PFR Foundation (see 'Finding a Surveyor' below).

The PRF survey needs to include recommend measures that will increase the property’s resilience to future flooding. Government rules state that only up to £800 of the total grant can be used to contribute towards survey costs. You will need to share this survey with the Council as part of a grant application – only measures recommended within the survey can be included in a grant claim.

Where a survey is undertaken but the owner doesn’t proceed with any recommend measures no grant to cover survey costs can be claimed. The grant can only be used for resilience measures that are in addition to any reinstatement that is covered by insurance claims – the funded PFR measures must either keep water from entering a property or reduce the damage water can do once it enters a property.

Property owners will be responsible for finding a suitable contractor to carry out works. Grants of up to £5,000 incl. VAT (including survey costs) will be paid retrospectively to the property owner, once the Council receives proof of the completed installation and invoicing for the approved measures.

Finding a Surveyor

The Council is not able to endorse any company offering surveys, but can confirm the following companies have appropriately qualified surveyors that meet the requirements of this scheme (this list will be added to as companies provide evidence to the County Council):

Aegaea	020 8164 128
Suffolk Flood Surveys	01473 845171
James Aldridge Chartered Surveyors	01473 659956 01502 519036 01284 724305
David Hackett Consultancy Ltd	07791 143438
David Brunning – SuDS Designs	01473 487322, 07498 614047

Eligibility

Properties must have been damaged internally by flood waters between the dates of 19 and 25 October 2023, and subsequently required drying out or repairs to the fabric of the building.

Properties need to have reported this damage to Suffolk County Council via the Highways Reporting Tool and received a letter or email from Suffolk County Council to invite them to make an application.

Eligible properties are:

Residential properties, including static caravans if they are the property owner’s primary residence
Business properties where internal areas which are critical to the day-to-day operations of the business were affected
Properties owned by local authorities who act as the landlord
Holiday lets that are operated as a business, where non-domestic rates are paid
Bed and Breakfast properties where the owner lives on site as their primary residence and pays domestic or non-domestic rates or both
Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) or blocks of flats, which will be considered as one property.

Non-eligible properties include:

Garages, outhouses or storage areas
Second homes
Empty homes
Basements or cellars not used as part of the habitable or business area of the property
Holiday cottages which are not part of a commercial enterprise and are not the principal residence of the owner.

If you have questions about the scheme or your eligibility, please email: floodgrants@suffolk.gov.uk

The term, ‘PFR’ stands for Property Flood Resilience and refers to any measure that can be applied to a building to make people and properties less vulnerable to the physical impacts of flooding. It can help people and properties become more resilient to the impacts of flooding and reduce the length of time needed for recovery if flooding were to reoccur, however there is always a residual risk that people and properties will still be flooded.

If you would like to understand more about the potential measures that this grant may be able to fund and what the cost of these may be, we can suggest visiting the National Flood Forum website. This national charity provides a large amount of information about property level protection, including: a step by step guide to installation, the Blue Pages - information about qualified surveyors, contractors and the kite marked materials used for PFR. The Flood Hub have produced a Homeowners Guide, which provides a comprehensive summary of PFR measures.

The Property Protection Advisor is a helpful tool that uses national data about properties and flood risk that you can customise for your house to identify potential PFR options and likely costs. We suggest you use this tool to better understand what this grant may be able to fund before engaging a surveyor. The report produced from the Property Protection Advisor tool should be used as a guide and should not be used to substitute a property survey, carried out by an independent, building surveyor.

BeFloodReady is another website with helpful information and videos to help you understand how to make your home more resistant to flood water and resilient to the impact it can have.

Free PFR training for homeowners – sign up to the training with the Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management is offering a free 10 hour training module for homeowners who suffered flooding during Storm Babet. You will learn how to prepare for future events and better protect your property.

The steps you need to take to make a grant application are as follows:

Speak to your insurer to see if they can repair your property under the ‘Build Back Better’ scheme, which includes PFR measures. If they can, there may be no need for you to apply for a grant. If your insurer will not include PFR under Build Back Better, you will need to appoint and pay for an independent, qualified surveyor to produce a report recommending suitable PFR measures. Please refer to the useful information tab to find out how to find a surveyor.
Once you have your survey report, you will need to get quotes for the PFR measure(s) you wish to install from suitable contractors. Please refer to the useful Information tab.
Once you have your surveyor’s report and quotes, you can go ahead and complete our application form. You have until the end of April 2025 to make an application.

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Property flood resilience (PFR) grant scheme

Who can apply for this funding?

Finding a Surveyor

Eligibility

Useful information

Next steps