20 February, 2026

It’s always good to see our work make the front pages of the national news, particularly when it brings urgent climate risks into sharp focus. 

This week, research and a report we helped write for Aviva made headlines in major national news outlets, including The Guardian and the Daily Mail. The findings are stark: one in nine new homes built in England between 2022 and 2024 are in areas of medium or high flood risk, up from one in 13 in the previous decade, potentially rising to 1 in 7 homes by 2050 as climate impacts intensify.  

The human implications are becoming harder to ignore. Earlier this month, residents of a terrace in Ynysybwl, Wales, were forced to leave their homes because they can no longer be protected from flooding – labelled the UK’s first “climate evacuees”.  

A key part of the challenge is insurance. New‑build homes fall outside the Flood Re scheme. This was a deliberate safeguard introduced in 2009 to discourage further development in high‑risk areas by preventing new properties from receiving subsidised cover. Yet, as this research makes clear, development in these areas has continued, leaving many households exposed without the safety net the scheme provides. 

Front‑page headlines alone won’t solve the issue. The government’s target to build 1.5m homes is creating pressure to build in areas at higher risk of flooding. Aviva’s recommendations speak directly to this tension: stronger national planning policy, mandatory resilience measures for all new builds, and clearer information for buyers about long‑term flood exposure. In other words, pair the ambition for more homes with the safeguards needed to make them liveable, affordable and insurable for decades to come. 

By Budd Nicholson