3% chance of flooding

[wombpaloumbpa]

Fallen for a house that has a 3% risk of flooding (surface water) each year according to gov.uk

Does anyone has experience of this? It sounds low to me but it's classed as 'high risk'. Checked out our current house and it's only 0.5% risk. So I guess it is significant.

I realise floods can be devastating and dangerous.

Anyone got any tips or advice?

Thank you!

Flood risks will only get worse as time goes on.

You might struggle to get house insurance.

I think 3% risk sounds like it would be the highest flood whereas 0.5% is medium. But a guess though.

It suggests it is 6x as likely to be flooded as where you are at the moment for surface water.

I am not sure how it works wrt fluvial flooding as well.

I think part of the issue for me is with climate change the likelyhood is that flooding is going to get worse rather than better. So a 1 in 30 year risk might soon end up being a 1 in 20. Which is uncomfortably close to what you might expect in a lifetime.

But a lot of it depends why it is likely to flood and whether anything can be done about it. And also whether large numbers of people will be affected.

For example if the government can do a small amount of work to prevent a large amount of houses flooding it probably will do that.

But a large amount of work to protect a small amount of housing makes little economic sense.

Surface flooding is massively exacerbated by people paving over front gardens to make drives, covering lawns and soil at the back with paving slabs to make 'low maintenance' gardens, and so on. Easy to vaguely claim it's down to climate change, but it's climate change plus entirely preventable behaviours by millions of people up and down the country. What can you do about it? If you must have a driveway or a patio area use gravel - then the water can drain down into the ground instead of running off the hard surfaces. And contribute to helping people to understand just how destructive and anti-social it is to keep covering ground with surfaces that rain can't drain through.