Two sites we told clients not to buy

A consultancy that has never advised a client to walk away is a consultancy whose advice is not worth much. Here is what those two conversations cost us and what they were worth.

by Ines Kowalczyk

Of the eleven Flood Zone 3 sites we assessed in 2025, we advised against pursuing two. Neither had a technical problem that could not in principle be engineered around; both had one that could not be engineered around economically, and in both cases the client had already committed money.

The first was a 60-unit site in the Thames catchment where the modelled 1-in-100-year plus climate change level put finished floor levels 1.4 metres above surrounding ground. That is achievable. Doing it while maintaining safe access and egress on a single-point access road that itself floods to 300mm was not, and the sequential and exception tests were not going to be passed on a site with a reasonable alternative half a mile away. The client had spent £180,000 on an option.

The second was smaller and worse: a rural site where the flood mechanism was groundwater emergence rather than fluvial, which is much harder to model, much harder to mitigate, and which the local authority had recent bad experience of. We advised that a defensible assessment would cost £40,000 and would probably conclude against the scheme.

Both clients accepted the advice. One of them has not instructed us since, which is the honest cost of giving it. The other has brought us four sites in the eighteen months following, and said in as many words that the reason was the first conversation.

The reason to write this down is not to look principled. It is that the alternative — taking the fee, producing a competent assessment, and letting the planning authority deliver the bad news twelve months later — is a service that a client can buy from anyone, and it is worth exactly what it costs.

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