When talking to you about searches your conveyancer may have offered you something called a climate risk search, for example the Groundsure ClimateIndex. These can sound like a good idea but are they really worth paying for?
Our climate is changing and that rate of change is increasing. A lot of focus in the built environment is quite rightly on how we reduce the impact our buildings are having on the natural environment but we also need to consider how our rapidly changing climate may affect our buildings.
The UK has a much higher proportion of older properties than most other countries which means our homes are less well equipped to cope with the changes. In fact homes built more recently and even being built now may not cope well with the changes in our climate that have already happened let alone the changes that are to come.
This all means that home buyers (and the professionals who assist them) need to think about how the specific property they are interested in will be affected. Flooding is a big concern of course gets lots of attention but there are a number of other risks that also need to be considered.
1. Will the gutters, downpipes and drains cope with increased periods of intense rain?
2. Will the roof timbers cope with the weight of snow during extreme cold spells? Will they also survive the more severe storms we are already starting to experience?
3. How will the house perform during a heat wave? You might enjoy all the light coming in through those windows in early spring but will it be too much come summer?
4. Wind driven rain is expected to increase by 25% in coming years, how will the walls and chimneys cope? Could there be problems with penetrating damp in years to come?
5. As the risk of damp increases and the weather gets warmer there will be an increase in wood boring insects such as common furniture beetle or deathwatch beetle? Are those few holes in that old timber going to be something to worry about?
6. Is there going to be increased risk of subsidence due to the ground drying out during periods of drought?
If you are buying a home and worried about how it might be affected by our changing climate then you may think a climate search will help. It will, but really not very much. To take the Groundsure ClimateIndex as an example, it does cover flooding, it mentions ground instability and even coastal erosion. That is helpful but to be honest a few minutes on Google will give pretty much all the same information (for example the Environment Agency website gives both the current flood risk for a property but also the estimated flood risk in 2040 for free). The information will be very general, and it will not consider factors like the construction or condition of the property. That does not mean it is not worth paying for, but it is good to understand the limits of what it will tell you.
So, if you are really interested in how your new home might be affected by climate change what should you do? The very best thing you can do is make sure you appoint a good local Surveyor, like me. As part of a Level 2 Home Buyers Survey or Level 3 Building Survey they can give you some truly helpful information about how your home could be affected and what you can do to limit those effects in the future. They can look at the individual factors about that individual building and give you property specific details.
p.s. If you are a Surveyor reading this and thinking I don’t know enough to provide clients with the advice they need then get in touch because I can also provide CPD on this.