Sustainability West Midlands site visit to UK Flood Barriers site

On Thursday 6 December, Sustainability West Midlands took a group of interested organisations including Local Authority officers and businesses from across the West Midlands, and the UK to the UK Flood Barriers site including their testing facility. The purpose of this visit was to gain a better understanding of UK Flood Barriers as an organisation, their story so far, and how they are positively contributing to improving the ability of towns, cities and organisations from across the World to be better prepared for the impacts of flooding. A highly topical debate at the moment, Patricia Freshwater, Commercial Director for UK Flood Barriers began the visit by outlining some of the achievements of the company so far. Following the devastating floods of 2007 it was quickly identified the opportunity to massively improve product performance across a whole spectrum of products.  UK Flood Barriers now design, manufacture, distribute and install the most comprehensive range of flood defence solutions in the UK under the Flood Angel® brand and are the exclusive distributors for the world acclaimed SCFB^TM part of the self closing flood barrier range.   The focus of the business is innovation, primarily with a drive to create ‘passive products’ which react as much as possible to the natural environment in which they are placed, enabling them to be carbon neutral as they are activated by the power of the water, requiring no people or power to activate. They currently have 20 products on the market, with more coming soon, and with control of each stage of all of their products in house, they have been able to set up a global office under the banner of ‘Global Flood Defence systems’ which enables them to work in countries all over the world. As the only privately owned company in the UK to have its own unique BSI approved testing facility British Standards Institute (BSI) accredited testing facility, they aim to kitemark as many of their products as possible and are now using their success to try and join up organisations and encourage them to work together. With the disastrous impact flooding can have to businesses, homes and economies, it is great to see such a successful company (currently amongst the highest growth of any company in the UK) who are acting quickly and successfully to move this agenda forward, not just here in the UK, but across the World. For more information, please visit the UK Flood Barriers website. For more information on how SWM is helping to prepare businesses for the future impacts of climate change, visit the Building Business resilience project page and the West Midlands Climate Adaptation project page. 

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Downloads

UK Flood Barriers presentation (pdf)