Understanding flood and coastal erosion risk is vital to ensuring that policymakers, practitioners and communities are ready to adapt to a changing climate.
We have lived with and seen the devastating effects of flooding and coastal erosion over many decades. We know that they can cause significant economic damage to people, businesses, landowners and infrastructure.
Communities are on the front line of flooding and coastal erosion, and we all have a role to play in ensuring we keep them informed of the risk they face.
At the Environment Agency, we are required to update our understanding of current and future flood and coastal erosion risk as part of our statutory roles under the 2010 Flood and Water Management Act. We have spent the past four years working with inland and coastal local authorities across England, including the LGA Coastal Special Interest Group, to develop a new National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) and a new National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM).
For the first time, both the NaFRA and NCERM data include assessments of future risk that account for the latest UK climate projections from the Met Office. This is vital, because we will continue to see the impacts of a changing climate leading to more frequent and severe flooding and storms.
We have already witnessed this across the country this winter. At the start of January, heavy rainfall and snowmelt resulted in significant river and surface-water flooding across large parts of England, with 1,600 properties affected.
We have to be prepared for more of this throughout the year as our weather patterns become increasingly unpredictable. The new NaFRA shows that around 6.3 million properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from one of, or a combination of, rivers, the sea and surface water. According to the new NCERM, 3,500 properties are in areas at risk of coastal erosion from now until 2055.
National and regional data from the NaFRA and NCERM feature in our recently published ‘National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2025’, and in our online long-term flood-risk checker.
In March, we will be updating our ‘Flood Map for Planning’, again using the new NaFRA data to show how climate change may affect the extent of flood risk from rivers and the sea in the future, and to display surface-water risk.
This improved service will assist council planners and local developers to make decisions about the location and design of new residential and commercial developments, and make it easier to produce flood-risk assessments.
- To find out more, please visit the Environment Agency’s New national flood and coastal erosion risk information.