Patrick Mooney examines how rising flood risk and record winter rainfall are undermining housebuilding targets, amid growing concern that new homes are being built in vulnerable locations.
The record breaking wet and windy start to the year was the last thing the construction sector needed as it attempts to recover from a housebuilding slump in 2025, during which completion rates barely hit 50% of the Government’s target. In fact, only 175,290 new homes were completed in England in the 15 months after Labour came to power and just 31,420 housing starts were made in the three months to September 2025, according to figures from the ONS.
But record levels of rainfall throughout January and February severely hindered progress being made at building sites across the country (especially in southern and central England) and focused our minds on the threat posed by flooding to the achievement of the Government’s 1.5 million new homes target despite a conveyor belt of planning reforms being introduced. The latest measures included default approval for building homes near train stations and looser environmental rules for smaller projects. At the same time, record levels of investment in new affordable homes have been promised.
Experts at the Met Office estimate that at current levels of global warming, wet winters like this year’s have gone from being once in 80-year events to once in 20, and with further warming this could become even more frequent. They say that six of the 10 wettest winters since records began nearly 250 years ago have been this century. They are effectively telling us to get used to this sort of weather and the difficult conditions associated with it, to be more careful about where we build new houses, and to invest far more in flood mitigation measures.
Wake up call
As our news channels and screens were filled with pictures of flooded homes and communities, a report from one of the country’s biggest insurance companies has provided a similar ‘wake up call’ by suggesting that we have not been particularly careful about where we have been building new homes in recent times, and perhaps site selection has been too driven by a desire to meet politically imposed targets rather than using local knowledge of what happens in spells of heavy rainfall.
Flood risk has become one of the fastest growing threats to our built environment, as a growing number of new homes are being built in areas at risk of flooding, according to the insurer Aviva. Their recently released analysis has revealed that one in nine new homes in England built between 2022 and 2024 were constructed in areas that could now be at risk of flooding, up from one in 13 new homes built between 2013 and 2022, and unfortunately the trend is set to continue.
Aviva’s data shows that by 2050, one in seven of the homes built between 2022 and 2024 will be at medium or high risk of flooding, and almost a third (30%) will face some kind of flood risk, as more extreme rainfall is predicted as a result of climate change. Of the 396,602 new homes recorded by the Ordnance Survey in England between 2022 and 2024, some 43,937 of them are in areas of medium or high risk of flooding, while 26% of new homes have some risk of flooding.
Emma Howard Boyd, former chair of the Environment Agency, who advises Aviva on climate policy, said the Government’s housebuilding target could create pressure to build in areas at a high risk of flooding. She said: “We don’t want to be building today’s houses in places where they will become ever more at risk of flooding. Defra and the Ministry for Housing need to be working closer together to make sure our housing targets aren’t preventing what we know is needed to protect future and existing homes from future levels of flooding.”
However, effective flood prevention measures do not come cheap and it may already be too late or too expensive to build the flood protection needed to save some areas. Boyd says some areas may have to be abandoned as it becomes too costly to protect houses and businesses. “I think particularly when money and resources are constrained, some of those very difficult decisions are going to have to be made by Government to make sure that the money that is available for flood prevention is having the most impact, but that is a very difficult political decision for our leaders to make,” she said.
Areas at risk
Aviva’s analysis, which draws on the new homes address data and cross-references it with the Environment Agency’s latest assessment of flood risk at constituency level, found that Greater London and Essex have the highest proportion (32%) of new at-risk properties. Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire, the west and north-west follow at 13%. The east of England has the lowest proportion of new at-risk homes at 2%. In England, it found the total number of properties at risk from flooding was expected to increase by more than a quarter (27%), from 6.3 million to 8 million, with the number of properties in high-risk areas for flash flooding, which are harder to predict and protect against, likely to increase by up to 66% by mid-century.
What is clear is that it is no longer just housing in coastal areas or in the traditional floodplains that are at risk. In December, the Environment Agency estimated that by 2050 one in four properties across the whole country would be at risk from flooding. It is inevitable that a percentage of the homes being built now in 2026 are adding to the total number of homes already at risk of flooding. There is no sign that recently awarded planning permissions are being methodically re-checked for their flooding risks to ensure that housing developments are safe to proceed with, although this would seem a very pragmatic and sensible course of action to take.
Some parts of the UK are already at risk of being abandoned because of flood risk, with the occupants of a terrace in Ynysybwl, south Wales, having their homes bought by the local council due to constant flooding with the residents relocated. It is also claimed that the town of Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire is slowly being abandoned by its occupants as they cannot get flood insurance on their homes, offices and businesses. The town has suffered seven floods in the last four years, and plans for new flood defences around the town were abandoned after costs rose to £30m.
Looking to the future, any prospective solution must surely include a closer alignment of policies on housebuilding and flood mitigation, while at the same time greatly increasing the money spent on flood defences, including nature friendly schemes like tree planting, attenuation ponds, and the creation of small dams and wetlands. This cannot simply mean putting pressure on developers to follow rules that will not function in practice. Instead, the Government must think about how to help local authorities source flood-risk data to speed up information-gathering for planning decisions, and how low- or medium-risk sites can be mitigated by developers to allow for building without compromising our obligations towards future residents, who want to own or rent a home without the fear of it flooding.
More realism needed
A recent survey of public sector workers at the frontline of housing delivery has revealed deep pessimism about the Government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes by 2029. Less than 1% of those surveyed believe the target can be achieved through current policy measures, with 60% saying the availability of funding for housing projects is insufficient. Land availability and developer expectations were identified as the biggest barriers to delivering more homes, in the survey report and analysis from public sector procurement body, Pagabo. The survey sample is quite small, involving 84 individuals from 69 local authorities and housing associations, but the organisation says the report represents a “sobering reality” for the Government.
Jonathan Parker, Pagabo’s development director, said: “Our report includes findings that suggest the Government’s housebuilding target is more optimistic than realistic, but this is tinged with a clear appetite to be able to deliver more homes. Without a greater understanding of the views and challenges being faced around the country by those tasked with delivery, no changes can be made. Having these insights means that the Government and wider delivery collaborators can now come together to find the solutions that breed confidence and progress against local targets – not see them dwindle further.”
The report, ‘Building 1.5 Million Homes: Is It Achievable?’ claims the most critical factor holding back housing delivery is a lack of sufficient, flexible, and long-term funding. Meanwhile, a trio of interconnected issues surrounding land cost, site availability and developer profit expectations present widespread barriers to delivering more homes, with planning restrictions, community opposition, and infrastructure constraints also cited as obstacles to overcome.
Parker added: “The structure of traditional contracts involving land sales followed by developer delivery is widely seen as misaligned with public objectives – which is likely feeding that barrier cited around community opposition. This reinforces the need for a more collaborative delivery model in which the public sector and developers share responsibility from the outset to accelerate delivery and maximise public value – but also ensuring that communities are taken on that journey as well, in order to truly be involved in shaping their own futures.”
Combining this feedback with the flooding data from Aviva shows just how difficult it will be to deliver the Government’s new homes target and a reassessment is surely required to ensure that properties are built in safe locations with long term futures. We cannot afford to be developing communities which are then abandoned due to a lack of insight of risks, investment in flood mitigation or the availability of insurance. Being safe from flooding should be an integral part of how we measure sustainability and give confidence to existing and future residents.