Flood ReThink 2026: Flood Performance Certificates Explained

Here we set out what a Flood Performance Certificate is, what the wider “Flood ReThink” package changed, and what it means if you own a home or bring forward development in a flood risk area.

What is a Flood Performance Certificate?

A Flood Performance Certificate is a document that sets out a property's flood risk and the resilience measures that could reduce the damage a flood would cause. Flood Re compares it to an Energy Performance Certificate: where an EPC rates a building's energy efficiency, an FPC rates how well a home resists and recovers from flooding, giving owners, buyers, renters and insurers a consistent way to understand the risk.

The idea is not new. Flood Re first published a report on the concept in 2020 and set out a delivery Roadmap in 2024. The 2026 reforms move it from paper towards a working pilot, developed with insurers, mortgage lenders and industry partners, and co-sponsored by the Association of British Insurers.

What did the Flood ReThink reforms actually change?

Flood Re announced a package of measures, developed with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to keep flood insurance affordable and workable as the scheme approaches the end of its life. The headline change is financial: Flood Re will more than halve the premium it charges insurers for contents-only policies in Council Tax Bands A and B, cutting it from £52 to £25 from April 2027. Insurers are expected to pass the saving to customers, targeting lower-income households and renters.

That change is a response to a structural imbalance. In three of the last four years, Flood Re has spent more repairing homes in Bands G and H, fewer than 4% of UK properties, than in Bands A and B, which make up around 45% of the housing stock. Better flood mapping has pulled more high-value homes into the scheme, so the reforms aim to redirect support towards the households it was set up to protect while pricing higher-value properties closer to their real cost. The two forward-looking measures, Flood Performance Certificates and an expanded Build Back Better programme, sit alongside that rebalancing.

If you want the background on how the scheme itself works, our guide to what Flood Re is and how it works covers eligibility, the levy and the 2039 end date in full.

Why is Flood Re introducing Flood Performance Certificates now?

Flood Re is scheduled to end in 2039, and its statutory job is to manage the transition to risk-reflective pricing, where premiums reflect a property's actual flood risk rather than a subsidised flat rate. With fewer than fifteen years left, the scheme needs a way to recognise resilience at the level of the individual building. A Flood Performance Certificate is designed to be that mechanism.

Two pressures make the timing deliberate. Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of flooding, and the Environment Agency now puts around 4.6 million properties in England at risk from surface water alone. At the same time, the scheme cannot keep absorbing rising claims costs indefinitely without pricing signals that reward homeowners for reducing their own risk. An FPC gives insurers a data point they have never had: a standardised measure of how resilient a specific home is, rather than council tax band used as a rough proxy for value.

How would a Flood Performance Certificate work?

Under the proposals, a property would be assessed against an agreed specification for flood resilience, producing a certificate that records its risk and the measures in place or recommended. Flood Re has said it will offer premium discounts to households that obtain an FPC or complete an equivalent self-assessment, giving owners a direct financial reason to act. The prototype is being tested through a pilot, with insurers and mortgage lenders involved in shaping how the certificate is used.

The measures an FPC would recognise are the same ones covered by property flood resilience practice: resistance measures that keep water out, such as flood barriers and airbrick covers, and recoverability measures that limit damage and speed recovery when water does get in, such as raised electrics and resilient plaster. Our guide to property flood resilience in the UK explains how resistance and recoverability work together and where the CIRIA Code of Practice fits.

What FPCs and the reforms mean for homeowners

For homeowners in flood risk areas, the practical prize is cheaper, more available insurance in return for making a home more resilient. If the pilot succeeds, an FPC could turn money spent on flood protection into a lower premium rather than a sunk cost, in the same way an EPC can influence a property's value and running costs. The premium cut for Bands A and B is a more immediate benefit for lower-income households and renters, though it does not take effect until April 2027.

The reforms also strengthen Build Back Better, the scheme that lets flooded households claim up to £10,000 towards resilience measures on top of repairing the damage. More than 70% of the residential insurance market now offers it, and Flood Re intends to push wider take-up by lowering the claims cap where an insurer does not offer it. For owners, the effect is that recovering from a flood should increasingly mean rebuilding to a more resilient standard rather than simply replacing what was lost. The wider question of how flood risk feeds into value, mortgages and insurability is one we cover in flood risk and the UK housing market.

What FPCs mean for developers and new builds

Developers should read the FPC as a signal, because Flood Re has never covered homes built after 1 January 2009, and new development cannot claim on the scheme. A new home in a flood risk area therefore relies on the open insurance market from day one, which makes demonstrable, well-evidenced resilience a commercial asset rather than an afterthought. Flood Re has said it is examining how resilience is specified and delivered through the planning process, and an FPC-style standard would give planners, insurers and buyers a common language for that.

This matters most where surface water risk is in play. Insurers and lenders have already warned that weakening flood safeguards could leave some new homes hard to insure and therefore hard to sell, a concern set out in the joint industry letter on the NPPF flood risk changes. For a developer, designing resilience in from the start, and evidencing it properly in a flood risk assessment, is the way to keep a scheme insurable and mortgageable over its lifetime.

How Flood Performance Certificates connect to a flood risk assessment

An FPC would rate a property's resilience, but it does not replace the site-specific evidence a planning application needs. A flood risk assessment establishes the flood risk to a development from every source, models how that risk behaves on the site, and shows how the design stays safe for its lifetime, including the residual risk that remains after defences and mitigation. Resilience measures, and any future FPC, sit within that assessment as part of managing risk, not instead of it.

In practice, the two are complementary. An FPC is a household-facing, insurance-facing rating; a flood risk assessment is the technical basis a planning authority and the Environment Agency use to decide whether a development is acceptable. Understanding residual flood risk, the risk left once defences and drainage have done their job, is central to both.

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