GovWire

Changes to flood and coastal erosion risk information

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 and our phased approach to publication.

We have published:

• 17 December 2024: A National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024 - this report is a summary of our new National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) data and new National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM) data

We plan to publish:

• 28 January 2025: New NaFRA2 Risk of flooding from rivers and sea and Risk of flooding from surface water data on Check your long term flood risk and available on data.gov.uk
• 28 January 2025: New NCERM on Check coastal erosion risk for an area in England, on Shoreline Management Plan Explorer and available on data.gov.uk
• Spring 2025: New NaFRA2 Flood zone data on Flood map for planning and available on data.gov.uk

Temporary pause to regular updates of flood risk data

The Environment Agency update the flood risk information for rivers and sea every 3 months to reflect new local information.

We have paused these regular updates in the lead up to publishing the new flood risk maps. This is to make sure that when we publish our improved maps, they 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, which was last updated 1 November 2023

• risk of flooding from rivers and sea, on the Check your long-term flood risk, which was last updated 6 December 2023

We plan to publish our new flood risk information in January and spring 2025. In mid-2025, we will resume regular updates of these maps.

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

New information we get during the pause to updates will be included in our flood maps after 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

New information that has changed our understanding of flood risk for a location may be included in planning and development considerations.

New national flood risk assessment information

On 17 December 2024 the Environment Agency published a National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024 report. The report is a summary of the new NaFRA and NCERM data, and identifies national trends in terms of the:

• source and characteristics of flood and coastal erosion risk
• distribution of risk across England
• potential for these to change in the future

We plan to publish improvements to our national flood risk maps from January 2025. These improvements are the result of our new NaFRA.

We are using new data and better methods. 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)

In January 2025, 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 in spring 2025.

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

Improvements to our national flood risk mapping

The Environment Agency is updating our flood risk information using a new process. This has been developed for our new national flood risk assessment. 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 maps
• 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 can find more detail about these changes on the DefraDSPSupport pages. The page provides detail on:

• the datasets we will publish
• how to access the data
• changes to formats and schema for our existing datasets
• the datasets we will not initially replace

Updated coastal erosion risk information

We also published a summary of the new NCERMdata in the National assessment of flood and coastal erosion

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