A plain-English guide to the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk checker — how to use it for any address in England, and what the results actually mean for your project.
The GOV.UK 'Check your long-term flood risk' service is the Environment Agency's free tool for finding out the ongoing flood risk to an area in England — the chance of flooding over years and decades, as opposed to the next few days. It's the first thing we check for any site, and a sensible first step before you buy land or submit an application.
It reports risk from four sources — rivers and the sea, surface water, groundwater (where data exists) and reservoirs — and shows how climate change could increase that risk in future. Each source is graded from very low to high.
Open the long-term flood risk checker →Four quick steps to get what you need from the tool.
Go to the tool and type in the postcode or place name. It shows risk for the area around an address, not the individual property, so use it as an area indicator.
The results are split by source — rivers and sea, surface water, groundwater, reservoirs. A site can be low risk from rivers but medium or high from surface water, so read all four.
The service shows how risk could change in future with climate change — important because an FRA has to consider the whole lifetime of a development, not just today.
The long-term checker is an area indicator; for the flood zone that drives planning, also check the Flood Map for Planning. If either shows Flood Zone 2/3 or medium/high risk, you'll likely need an FRA.
If the checker shows anything above low risk — or the Flood Map for Planning puts your site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 — your planning application will usually need a Flood Risk Assessment. The tool won't tell you whether you specifically need one, or design the mitigation; that's what an FRA does. Send us the postcode and we'll confirm, free, whether an FRA is required.
Send us your postcode and we'll tell you, free, whether your site needs a Flood Risk Assessment.
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