High risk of flooding from surface water

[SurfaceWater]

We had an offer accepted to buy a property on Monday.

Just filling out the paperwork for the sale of our current house, which asked for the flood risk as given by the gov website, so whilst there we looked up the risk for the property we want to buy, and it came back high risk for flooding from surface water. But it says there's a low chance of flooding up to 20cm.

Low risk from any other flooding (it's not near any rivers, streams etc).

Looking at the neighbouring properties, in fact all other properties on the street, and they're mostly low risk, with one next door being medium.

Have also looked at the surface water map but to be honest I'm not sure how much we can glean from that - can't zoom in enough to pinpoint this particular property but yes can see there is a small patch of dark blue/ high risk.

I don't really know how to proceed now - we've spoken to the agent who weren't aware of this and are getting back to us. We've obviously enquired about any history of flooding and asked seller to disclose, but how reliable that will be I don't know? Google also suggests talking to neighbours/ locals but given it's only this house on the whole street that seems to have the high risk I'm not sure what good that will do - also how, just go and knock on their doors? I know the seller is really friendly with those next door on both sides so how honest are they likely to be?

We're cash buyers so no mortgage implications, but obviously there's a concern about insurance. And obviously as climate change progresses, how much more of a risk is there?

I'm mostly just baffled why this particular property is high when none of the others are - it's in the middle, not at the bottom of a hill, no lower than any of the others.

Edit - forgot to say, I guess I'm asking what would you do, what additional steps should we take? I've never sold/ bought before - I moved in with DH who bought this as a first time buyer, we've been here ever since.

Does it have a basement or cellar that other properties don’t? Although I’m not sure the flood mapping even takes that into account.

It might be a random error, or there maybe a major drainage issues which only impacts that house. Call your local Environment Ageny office for more advice and be very careful to check if you can insure the house.

@MiddleAgedDread no basement/ cellar

Thanks @turkeyboots we will

I second the environment agency contact.

Also have you checked the sewer maps ? Maybe this house is sewage central - also something to be aware of if you are thinking of extending.

Think also about whether it will affect your ability to get a mortgage. Some lenders can be fussy about things like this.

It's a tricky one.

For starters, I think that the EA have a duty to know a property's flood risk and not hide it. But good luck nailing that jelly to the wall.

Regarding the property. We'd always swerve any property (even it has mitigated the risk) because we can't tell how it will impact a future vendor's decision.

But the property may actually be at no risk whatsoever. If it doesn't have a basement and is somewhat elevated on its plot then it may be perfectly fine despite what the map says.

As cash buyers it is easier to turn a blind eye to something you've become emotionally attached to.
Speak to your solicitor and get the best survey you can. Speak to insurance Co.
20cm sounds a lot but maybe only get flooded every couple of years. I've seen it near us and traffic doesn't slow down because there is floods.

Aside from establishing the reason for the increased flood risk to this property compared to its neighbours, you must consider the ongoing impact on increased premiums for your house and contents insurance policies. Many insurance companies immediately stop the quote application procedure as soon as you give answers to the questions regarding the established risks.

If you find this, as did I in my recent house purchase, when even the existing owners' refused to insure it for me, I eventually found an insurer via 'Flood Re' scheme which is a gov.uk backed initiative.

https://www.floodre.co.uk/

We've accepted that we have to pay more for our insurance and that hopefully the Environment Agency will update it's figures and maps in due course.

However, another consideration is that until then, this may put off somebody else buying when I want to sell the property.

For now I'm happy as this property is ideal for our family's needs right now and I have no regrets.

Thanks all. DH has spoken to our insurance company and got a quote and doesn’t seem to have affected the premiums hugely, but I don’t know if that would change the further we got into the application.

I spoke to the local environment team at our council and the woman didn’t know any more about it; she transferred me to the planning team who said if we did submit planning permission for say an extension (which may well be our plan) they’d only get involved if it came back as in the flood zone, which it’s not. It’s in flood zone one/ low risk as I looked up this map too, but this map only takes into account risk from rivers and sea.

Vendor says there’s never been any flooding in the 30 years he’s lived there, and I know he would say that but I’m inclined to believe him. DH’s parents actually lived on the road that backs onto it up until about 10 years ago, they don’t recall any flooding. We also know someone whose mum lives at the other end of the street so may ask them. But again, there’s no reason any of the nearby people would have seen any flooding because their houses are all categorised as low risk, it’s only this property that’s high and the immediate neighbours were medium. I guess they’re the ones to ask!

I’m not quite sure how we can check the sewer maps - i tried looking but we need the wastewater supply point identifier number so I’ll have to look into finding that.

We could also pay for our own flood risk assessment survey to be done, which I think we’ll probably have to if we decide to go ahead.

Whilst it says there’s a high risk of flooding, it also says there’s a low risk of flooding up to 20cm - which is the lowest one they measure (see image)

It’s a lovely house and the perfect location, it’s the one that offers us the most space of any that have come up and we did definitely fall for it. Made harder by the fact that for various reasons we have a very narrow search area, ridiculously so.

I feel like we’d be daft to walk away now, I’m confident that there hasn’t actually been any flooding. On the other hand it’s a real worry and if we ARE going to walk away now would be the right time before we’ve spent any more on the process.

I don’t really know who best to contact to find out what the specific risk/ rating for that particular property is based on. Everything I can find is talking about when whole roads or at least a big section of it is classed as high risk. I suppose the only way is to get the risk assessment done.

This was literally me last week (I posted about this at the weekend), I got in touch with the agency that does the flood reports (in Scotland it's SEPA) and broke down how they're configured and the risk is not what it seems initially, more to do with future forecasting etc. Get in touch with the agency that does the report, the council about drainage and potentially ask your solicitor to investigate whether the sellers are aware of any previous flooding.

Our posts crossed!

Our current house has this also, no idea why!!

I wonder if it's an error.
My Mothers house was at one point deemed a flood risk with all the surrounding houses that did indeed flood almost every year.

Terribly difficult to insure and also rather frustrating given it was high on a sandstone outcrop at least 30 feet above the other properties.
They did rectify it eventually.

I only found out as it's on that form now when you put it for sale. Never had anything near flooding, bizarre!

Does it sit in some sort of local hollow ? Even a foot or so lower than the houses either side might push it into a different zone.

At the environment agency you get the surface water risk map as well as the risk rating. This should allow you to look at the distribution of risk and maybe identify the source of the risk.

It's so strange isn't it? We just looked because we were having to fill that form out for our own house. The seller was really surprised and I do believe him that he's not had any flooding.

@GasPanic I need to go back and look again, going to have a drive over today - nothing immediately obvious on the two times we viewed it but now we're driving ourselves mad thinking 'well maybe it was a slight slope actually' and staring at the pictures trying to work out if the driveway is sloping down slightly! So need to go look again in person.

We've seen the map on the EA website where we saw the risk rating, but it doesn't allow you to zoom in enough to see the individual houses - except the one we were buying is obviously the dark blue/ high risk, medium risk next door and the rest (pale blue) is low risk - anything with no blue is very low risk I'm assuming. I'm clearly not clever enough to work out what it actually means!

This is as zoomed as I can get it. There's obviously something going on with the road behind it too - that's all blue.

DH on phone to environment agency now but to be honest I think we might be walking away - maybe? We're going back and forth between thinking it's the perfect location and everything we wanted and anything else even close is wildly out of budget so it seems a huge overreaction to give it up over this, then next minute thinking we'd never be fully relaxed about it and if something did happen we'd always know that we knew the risk and ignored it.

It's possible that it is associated with that stream/brook/drainage whatever to the se of the marker point.

If your house is set at the low point of the road (and it might be quite hard to tell this visually), it may be that eveything drains down into it, then is in a culvert into that drainage.

So what you are seeing is the potential for the drainage system to back up, or the fact all water drains into your location.

Impossible to know for sure.

Spots like that on the maps are not unusual though, to have a local low point where water collects. I'd be surprised if it were an error.

Have you done a google search for flooding in the area ?

We live very close by - there has been flooding nearby at the start of this year, but nowhere near our current property or where this one was. It was bad though - friends houses/ cars were affected and some roads were closed for days. In those cases though it was fairly obvious why those particular spots would be affected. I agree though that it's unlikely to be a mistake - I think it's possibly a drain issue. There's no stream or brook anywhere near - the nearest is a good 10 minute walk away.

I'm confident it never has flooded - just not so secure it never will! Obviously climate change, things are getting worse etc. Clearly if there ever is an issue in that street, that house is the one that's going to cop for it the most. It may never affect us, but I just think we're always going to be on edge about it - plus it may affect us selling it in the future if the next buyers see the same report (it's supposed to be our forever home but there's still a 'what if')

We've only paid for the initial searches/ to start the process so far (and haven't had anything back yet - this came up because we looked ourselves having had to look for our own property). Feels like if we're going to walk away now is the time to do it.

I'm exactly 50/50 to be honest - half of me thinks it's a massive overreaction and we should just press on, it'll be fine, the other half thinks we can't ignore it now we know.

Personally, I wouldn't touch anything that comes up as high risk for any type of flooding. Maybe that's because we did get flooded in a previous property, but with climate change, increased rainfall and flooding becoming more regular, future buyers could and will be put off. The stress from flooding is horrific and the Flood RE scheme, although available now, is due to end in the next 15 years, after which there is talk of handing back the responsibility of flood cover to insurance companies, which means much higher premiums or difficulty even getting cover. For me, it would be one of those things I couldn't unsee and if you're concerned now, others will be too if/when you come to sell.

We have pulled out.

DH, never the calmest of people, has been so stressed out about it since spotting it yesterday - partly why I posted here - and in combination with how far we were stretching the budget for this and how much work needs doing once we’re in, it just all felt too much. Like I said, I still feel in part like we’ve overreacted, but we were never going to be fully happy going forward and we’re always going to be worried about it now.

As it is, we’ve lost a few hundred quid paid for the initial searches (which we didn’t even get the results of yet) but I just think for DH it confirmed doubts he was maybe already having, and if we had pulled out any later it would have been even more wasted.

Oh well, back to the drawing board! At least we know now to check the flood risk of any potentials before getting to offer stage!

Early on in our house search, we fell for a property that had a medium risk of surface water. Whilst it was highly unlikely to be an issue, I couldn't get it out of my head. As it happens, we couldn't offer on the property anyway as we had to reduce and the vendor wouldn't (it's still on the market now). I think you did the right thing as it would have just nagged away at you. The general risk of flooding in the UK will likely get worse not better, which is why all this new mapping work has been done in the first place.

I'm sorry you have pulled out but I guess you need to do what you feel comfortable with.

For info, our house is apparently high risk from surface water flooding. Goodness knows why. We have lived here for 13 years and its been fine, even with some of the horrendous rainfall we have had here over the years. Talking to all our neighbours, some who have been here all their lives, 50+ years, and there has never been any flooding of any kind, nor has it even come close to flooding!! None of us that live where we do understand why we have been graded high risk and what they base that on.

No help to you now if you have made your decision already but maybe just to bear in mind for your next purchase.

Our house is now moderate or high risk of surface water flooding and we only found out cos our insurance said they wouldn't renew because of it though we haven't had a problem getting insurance with someone else. We've lived here 25 years and it wasn't at risk before, there's no river or stream near and I don't see how we would flood from surface water as the drive slopes up to the house. It's concerning that it would put off buyers, not that we've plans to sell anytime soon.

There is a thread on here that gives info on things you can check before you put in an offer.

You can get flood maps, TPOs, do a shadow analysis on the garden and check a whole load of other stuff. There is one site where you can check crime in the area.

@ChewbaccaAteMyHamster honestly I think had we gone ahead the odds are we would have been fine, and if it had been solely up to me I probably would have gone ahead after dithering a day or two. DH is a different animal though - he’s ND and it does lead him to fixate on things at time and I could see him doing so on this. He then disclosed some other doubts and worries he was having (despite being the one who was so set on this particular house in the first place!!) and I could just see it would be too much for him, and us.

We will definitely have to be more prepared before making any other offers so I will search out that thread thanks @GasPanic

I think you've done the right thing personally. The likelihood of flooding might be low but the implications if it ever did happen are appalling. I pulled out of a purchase last year for similar reasons (compounded with the fact that the house was grade 2 listed). The EA was very scathing but this will become more and more a thing as places that have never flooded before begin to, possibly repeatedly.

As a point of interest, if you have to look up the risk for a specific form before you can put your house on the market now, how can the seller genuinely have been surprised when you raised it? Surely they had already seen the map for themselves?