Building Standards

Consultation on proposed updates on Flooding and groundwater

September 11, 2025 by Simon Moore No Comments | Category Building Standards, Consultation

A blog by Thomas Lennon

Flooding cannot be prevented. It is estimated that in Scotland alone around 284,000 properties are at risk of flooding, with 229,000 of these properties being the homes we, and our families, live in. This means that around 1 in 11 homes in Scotland are currently at risk of flooding.

In November 2019 the Property Flood Resilience Delivery Group (PFRDG) published the ‘Living with flooding: An action plan for delivering property flood resilience in Scotland’. The key objective of this was to influence policy decisions as well as provide clear guidance on property flood resilience (PFR) to industry, property owners and occupiers alike.

Off the back of this publication, officials within Building Standards Division committed to identifying opportunities to strengthen PFR guidance within Building Standards Technical Handbook guidance for domestic and non-domestic properties.

It was in that context that between June 2022 and September 2024 Officials established an expert working group to review the existing guidance relating to Standard 3.3 ‘Flooding and groundwater’ and assist in making recommendations to helping both update and improve the guidance offered to design and construction professionals when considering property flood resilience within their proposed development. This culminated in the launch of a consultation on 11 July 2025 ‘Building Standards: Flooding and groundwater guidance’ which sets out proposed updates to the guidance of Standard 3.3.

The proposals are summarised below: 

• Expanding upon the introductory guidance to provide further context to the risks associated with flooding, as well as the need to assess and address property flood resilience, especially when developing in flood risk areas, to help ensure that new developments can continue to take place
• Setting out the expectation of the need to undertake flood risk assessments for any development site, with expanded guidance provided on issues and information to be considered when reporting
• Expanding content on the approach to building specification in consideration of both flood resilience and recoverability options, as well as signposting users to further sources of information such as the CIRIA Code of Practice
• Updating references to the external standards and publications cited throughout the guidance to Standard 3.3
• The introduction of a new annex to update and reissue background information taken from the now superseded PAN 69 on the water environment and factors that contribute to flooding to help raise awareness and knowledge of the range flood risk measures available. 

This consultation closes on 3 October 2025. Those affected by the subject matter or involved in new development are strongly encouraged to submit views at https://consult.gov.scot/housing-and-social-justice/flooding-and-groundwater-guidance-update/.

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