Flood Map for Planning: Flood Zones with Climate Change Projections for England

The Flood Map for Planning Service from the UK Environment Agency includes a composite layer showing how flood zones could expand due to climate change over the next century. It combines national and local modelled data with information from past floods, ignoring the benefits of existing flood defences. The dataset was last updated on 2026-05-29.

Use Cases

• Identify the need for a site-specific flood risk assessment based on projected flood zone extents.
• Inform the sequential test for land-use planning based on future flood risk.
• Prepare strategic flood risk assessments for local authorities using composite modelled data.
• Analyze potential long-term flood risk from rivers using the 'Central' climate change allowance for the 2080s epoch.
• Assess sea-level rise flood risk using the 'Upper End' climate change allowance accounting for cumulative rise to 2125.

Strengths

• Includes climate change projections for flood risk over a century-long time horizon (to 2125).
• Combines multiple data sources: national and local modelled data plus historical flood information.
• Explicitly states the climate change allowances used ('Central' for rivers, 'Upper End' for sea).

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is designed only for area-level risk indication and is not suitable for assessing risk to individual properties.

Provenance

Source

Environment Agency

Collection Method

Composite dataset including national and local modelled data, and information from past floods.

Time Range

Projections cover the 2080s epoch (2070-2125) for rivers and cumulative sea level rise to 2125.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 14:32:19.535312; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Covers England, as indicated by the instruction to use data feeds to view data for all of England.