Statutory guidance

Excluded flood risk activities

Published 13 October 2016

Applies to England

You don’t need an environmental permit if you plan to do one of these excluded activities on or near a main river or sea defence. But you must operate within the description and conditions of the exclusion.

If you plan to do any other activities on or near a main river that aren’t listed here as excluded activities, check which exemptions you can use and which permits you might need to apply for to do work.

You can use this map to check which rivers are main rivers.

1. Work in an emergency

You can act without applying for a permit to manage the impacts when there’s an imminent risk of serious:

• flooding
• damage to or preventing land drainage
• harm to the environment

But you must write to the Environment Agency as soon as possible afterwards, explaining what happened and what you did.

The Environment Agency may later instruct you to make changes to the work, for example to make steep excavated slopes more stable.

You’ll need a permit if you have a pre-planned activity that you will use in response to an emergency (such as planning to use a temporary freestanding barrier in a particular place when you receive a flood warning), unless it can be registered as exempt or is attached to a building (like an airbrick cover).

Find out what to do before, during and after a flood.

2. If you’ve applied for a Marine Management Organisation licence

To use this exclusion, you must inform the Environment Agency if you have applied to the Marine Management Organisation for a marine licence. The Environment Agency will decide if the terms and conditions of the marine licence will cover their concerns.

If the Environment Agency decides you don’t need an environmental permit, it will tell you in writing.

3. Using ladders and scaffold towers

You can put these up in or near a main river if they are taken down at the end of each day and stored away from the river.

Each day, before you put them up, you must check the river conditions so that you’re sure that their use will not increase flood risk.

4. Services crossing a river within an existing structure

This could be something like laying cables in a pavement over a bridge. The crossing must be within the profile of the existing structure. You must not work from the river or the bank and you must store any equipment you use away from the river.

If the existing structure has been identified for removal under a river basin management plan, it’s not an excluded activity. Contact the Environment Agency before you apply for an environmental permit and before you do any work.

5. Flood protection devices attached to buildings

You can install door boards, airbrick covers and attach other flood protection devices to buildings without a permit.

6. Minor works for highways and rights of way on or near bridges and culverts

You don’t need a permit as long as your work won’t affect the riverbed, banks, water level or flow in the river (including flood flow). This includes work such as road resurfacing or traffic control signs.

You must not work from the river itself or from the bank and any equipment you use must be stored away from the river.

7. Post and rail or post and wire fencing in a floodplain

You can put fencing near a main river and on a floodplain but not on the bed or banks of a main river.

The fencing must either be post and rail or post and wire. If you use wire, it must be either wire strands or at least 100mm spaced mesh.

8. Temporary use of small fish traps

Fish traps must be no bigger than 2m x 1m x 0.75m. The fish trap or combination of traps together must take up less than a third of the river’s channel width.

You must place them more than 50m upstream or downstream of any obstruction. You must not use them when the river is in high flow.

9. Noticeboards more than 2m from the top of a river bank

You must attach the noticeboard to an existing fence or freestanding permanent post.

It must be more than 2m from the landward side of the bank and more than 2m from any culvert, remote defence, flood defence structure or sea defence.

10. Clearing out a purpose-built sediment trap

You must not release sand or silt downstream when cleaning out a trap.

If you want to deposit the silt on the floodplain, you must do all of the following:

• spread it to a depth of no more than 100mm
• spread it no closer than 8m from the riverbank
• check if you need a waste permit or exemption

11. Site investigation boreholes and trial pits

You may do this work if all of the following apply. It’s:

• within the floodplain of a main river
• more than 5m from any culvert, remote defence, flood defence structure or sea defence
• more than 8m from the riverbank (16m if it’s a tidal river)

You must complete the work and refill within 48 hours.