It is concerned that flood control and coastal defence is too fragmented and cumbersome, with more than 250 government agencies and associated bodies in England and Wales sharing the responsibility.
The RICS makes its appeal for a review of flood protection measures in a guide for surveyors called Flooding, which is published on the RICS website. William Tew, director of the RICS rural faculty, which compiled the report, said the body was receiving an increasing number of queries about the issue.
The RICS guide cites figures issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that suggest homes and commercial property worth a total of £200bn are at risk from flooding.
Many believe that the risk of flooding is increasing because of climate change. Last autumn was the wettest autumn since records began in 1766 and deputy prime minister John Prescott described the resulting flood damage as a "wake-up call".
People won’t want to buy houses in floodplains
David Brooks, RICS
Widespread development has also increased the risk of flooding. Rainfall can be more easily absorbed into soil on undeveloped land and then released into river tributary systems in a slow, regulated way. But the spread of concrete surfaces causes more rainfall to flow rapidly over the ground, leading to floods.
David Brooks, chair of the RICS' coastal and flood defence working party, said planners now paid more attention to water run-off, using PPG25 as a guide. But he said only time would tell how effective the preventive measures were.
He said: "In the longer term, market forces will have an effect – people won't want to buy houses in floodplains and insurers won't want to insure them, unless there's some certainty of it being prevented."
But Tew noted that most of the land affected by flooding was rural rather than urban. And he added that in some areas, the agencies responsible for flood defence were starting to question whether it was simply too costly to protect some farmland. Instead they proposed a policy of "managed retreat".
