Updates to national flood and coastal erosion risk information
What you need to know about the Environment Agency’s new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion.
Applies to England
The Environment Agency is publishing new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion. This includes future scenarios accounting for climate change.
This guidance provides information on these important changes.
We plan to publish:
- our new national coastal erosion risk mapping (NCERM2) later in 2024
- improvements to our national flood risk maps using our new national flood risk assessment (NaFRA2) by the end of 2024
Pause to regular updates of flood risk data
The Environment Agency normally update the flood risk information for rivers and sea every 3 months to reflect new local information.
We have paused these regular updates as we get ready to publish the new flood risk maps. This will make sure that our improved maps are consistent with our current flood risk data. We are also using this time to focus on making the newer data as good as it can be.
We have paused updates to:
-
flood zones on the Flood Map for Planning portal – these were last updated 1 November 2023
-
risk of flooding from rivers and sea on the Check Your Long-Term Flood Risk – this was last updated 6 December 2023
We plan to publish our new flood risk information by the end of 2024. In 2025, we will resume regular updates of these maps every three months.
We will continue to update other data included on the Flood Map for Planning portal. This includes data relating to:
- flood history
- flood defences
- water storage areas
New flood risk information during the pause to regular updates
We will include new information we get during the update pause in our flood maps when regular updates resume in 2025.
This includes:
- new local flood models that we have created
- data provided by third parties, subject to business requirements
We will provide notifications to indicate where there is new local flood risk information.
We will do this on the:
- Check Your Long-Term Flood Risk website
- Flood Map for Planning portal
Local planning authorities may include new information that has changed our understanding of flood risk for a location in planning and development considerations.
New coastal erosion risk information
The Environment Agency plan to publish our new national coastal erosion risk maps later in 2024.
You can view your erosion risk online using the Check coastal erosion management in your area website.
Improvements to national coastal erosion risk mapping
Extensive coastal data sets for England have been gathered since the publication of the NCERM in 2012.
This has been done by:
- the Environment Agency
- local authorities
- coastal monitoring programmes
- other coastal partners
We have used this evidence to provide the most up to date national assessment of coastal erosion risk for England.
The new national coastal erosion risk information:
- uses coastal data and new methods to provide more reliable erosion predictions
- shows the coastal erosion risk information in a mapped format to be used by coastal managers, planners and decision makers
- will be publicly accessible to encourage wider understanding of coastal erosion risk
Future scenarios accounting for climate change
We will publish new national coastal erosion risk information accounting for climate change. We are generating potential future scenarios using new techniques to model how erosion may increase with rising sea levels.
New flood risk information
The Environment Agency plans to publish improvements to our national flood risk maps by the end of 2024. These improvements are the result of our new NaFRA2.
We are using new data and better methods. There will be changes to flood risk information in many areas. We will also publish flood risk data for national climate change scenarios for the first time.
You can view your flood risk online using the Check Your Long-Term Flood Risk website.
This includes the risk of flooding from:
- rivers
- the sea
- surface water
- reservoirs
- groundwater (where data is available)
By the end of 2024, you will see changes to:
- risk of flooding from rivers and sea
- risk of flooding from surface water
For planning and development, you can check whether your area is in a flood zone using the Flood Map for Planning portal. You will see changes to the flood zones by the end of 2024.
These datasets are also available for users to download on the Defra Data Services Platform.
Future scenarios accounting for climate change
We will publish new national flood risk information accounting for climate change. We are generating future scenarios using climate change allowances.
These are scenarios of anticipated change for:
- peak river flow
- peak rainfall intensity
- sea level rise
- offshore wind speed and extreme wave height
We will provide more information on which climate change scenarios will be included in each dataset in due course.
Improvements to our national flood risk mapping
The Environment Agency is updating flood risk information using a new process. This has been developed for our new NaFRA2. The process combines new and existing data to improve our national flood risk maps.
This includes:
- outputs from detailed local flood risk models
- a new state-of-the-art national flood risk model
Local modelling of flood risk often captures important local features better than national modelling.
The new national model is a significant improvement on our existing national modelling. We will use outputs from this national model in areas where we do not have high-quality local modelling.
The new process will result in a range of improvements to our national flood risk mapping, including:
- greater consistency between local and national flood risk information
- additional risk information, including flood depth
- finer spatial resolution for flood risk from rivers and sea
We are inviting lead local flood authorities and coastal risk management authorities to review a draft version of our new surface water and coastal flood risk maps. This will help us make sure they are as high quality as possible ahead of publication.
Detail for our professional partners
We make national flood risk data freely and openly available to a wide range of users via the Defra Data Services Platform (DSP). The DSP provides the best available information on flood risk. This helps organisations with a role in flood risk management or with a need to plan their own operations.
We will publish new flood risk information on the DSP including:
- scenarios accounting for climate change
- maps of flood depth
There will be some changes to data formats and structures. You may need to change your processing steps if you are a regular user of the data published on the DSP. You will be able to find more detail about these changes on the Defra DSP Support pages in due course.
Contact the Environment Agency
General enquiries
National Customer Contact Centre PO Box 544 Rotherham S60 1BY
Email enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk
Telephone 03708 506 506 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm)
Telephone from outside the UK +44 (0) 114 282 5312 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm GMT)