New national flood and coastal erosion risk information
Source: gov.uk (2025-03-25)

What you need to know about the Environment Agency’s new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion.

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:
- 25 March 2025: New NaFRA ‘flood zone’ data on ‘flood map for planning (https://flood-map-for-planning.service.gov.uk/)’ and available on data.gov.uk (https://www.data.gov.uk/) - this service allows developers and planners to find the data they need to undertake flood risk assessments
- 28 January 2025: New National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) ‘Risk of flooding from rivers and sea’ and ‘Risk of flooding from surface water’ data
- 28 January 2025: New National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM) data
- 17 December 2024: A ‘National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-assessment-of-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-in-england-2024) report - this report is a summary of our new NaFRA and NCERM data
New national flood risk assessment (NaFRA)

Our new NaFRA:
- provides a single picture of current and future flood risk from rivers and the sea, and from surface water
- uses both existing detailed local information and improved national data
- includes the potential impact of climate change on flood risk, based on UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/approach/collaboration/ukcp)
- shows potential flood depths
- provides much higher resolution maps that make it easier to see where there is risk
Access the new NaFRA data

The new NaFRA data is available on:
- check your long term flood risk (https://www.gov.uk/check-long-term-flood-risk)
- data.gov.uk (https://www.data.gov.uk/)
We also published a summary of the new NaFRA data in the ‘National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-assessment-of-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-in-england-2024) report.

Improvements to our national flood risk mapping

The Environment Agency has updated 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 has resulted 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 invited 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 ensured they were as high quality as possible ahead of publication.

Future scenarios accounting for climate change

We have published new national flood risk information accounting for climate change. We are generating future scenarios using climate change allowances (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/flood-risk-assessments-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
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 (https://environment.data.gov.uk/) (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 have published new flood risk information on the DSP including:
- scenarios accounting for climate change
- maps of flood depth
There have been changes to data formats and structures. You will 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 Defra DSP Support pages (https://environment.data.gov.uk/support/announcements/569147407/568393733). The page provides detail on:
- the datasets we are publishing
- how to access the data
- changes to formats and schema for our existing datasets
- the datasets we will not initially replace
Further updates to our flood risk information

We plan to update our flood risk information regularly to reflect new local information.

This includes:
- new local flood models that we have created
- data provided by third parties, subject to business requirements
We paused regular updates in the lead up to publishing the new flood risk maps. We plan to resume regular flood risk updates from summer 2025.

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 (https://www.gov.uk/check-long-term-flood-risk) website
- flood map for planning (https://flood-map-for-planning.service.gov.uk/) portal
New national coastal erosion risk map (NCERM)

Our new NCERM:
- provides the most up to date national picture of coastal erosion risk for England
- is based on coastal monitoring data from the National Network of Regional Coastal Monitoring Programmes (https://coastalmonitoring.org/) - this includes 10 years more evidence on coastal processes since the original map was published
- accounts for the UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/approach/collaboration/ukcp) which includes allowances for sea level rise
It reflects the latest coastal management approaches set out in shoreline management plans (SMPs). Our assessment identifies the impacts of coastal erosion. It does this with SMPs being funded and delivered compared to the worst case where the SMPs are not funded or delivered.

Access the new NCERM data

The new NCERM data is available on:
- check coastal erosion risk for an area in England (https://www.gov.uk/check-coastal-erosion-management-in-your-area)
- shoreline Management Plan Explorer (https://environment.data.gov.uk/shoreline-planning) and shoreline management plans guidance (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/shoreline-management-plans)
- data.gov.uk (https://www.data.gov.uk/)
We also published a summary of the new NCERM data in the ‘National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-assessment-of-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-in-england-2024) report.

Improvements to our 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
- National Network of Regional 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 projections
- 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 have produced potential future scenarios using new techniques to model how erosion may increase with rising sea levels because of climate change.

Our new national coastal erosion risk information is based on these scenarios.

Further updates to our coastal erosion risk information

On 28 January 2025 we published the new NCERM data on check coastal erosion risk for an area in England (https://www.gov.uk/check-coastal-erosion-management-in-your-area) and SMP Explorer (https://environment.data.gov.uk/shoreline-planning). The first update is expected to be later in 2025. While details are to be confirmed, we expect updates to then follow yearly.

Contact the Environment Agency

General enquiries

National Customer Contact CentrePO Box 544RotherhamS60 1BY

Email xxx@xxx.xx

Telephone 03708 506 506 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm)

Telephone from outside the UK xx-xxxx-xxxx (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm GMT)