Flooding - does it worry you?

Well it might seem like a silly question but I have personal experience of the cost and grief that losing a business can have on your life, as well as those around you, when a flood invades your business space.

There are a quite a few different flood types, each with characteristics of their own, and it is very likely that your business is at risk from at least one of them, and probably from several. I mention this here because of a contingency planning tool-kit that is being produced especially for small to medium sized retail businesses by the sponsors of this blog space. Their work is demonstrating that SME retailers, because of their traditional locations, are much more likely to be based in flood plains and valleys than not - making them especially vulnerable to flooding from storm fed river flows, still more are in coastal resorts on low lying land. Given the nature of retailing and the investment into the ground floor and basement areas of the premises that retailers generally occupy - this increases their vulnerability to succumbing from the effects of flood.

With climate change affecting our weather systems in the way that that has been demonstrated for the past decade, it is astounding to me that more owners and managers do not make planning for flood events a more serious part of their routine. Take a look at http://www.welbeckretail.co.uk/ over the next few weeks; if you feel that you could do with a structured approach to this sort of contingency planning then let them know. I'm assured that you won't be charged for asking!