How to check the flood risk for your business premises (England, Scotland, Wales, NI)

Every UK nation has a free official flood map you can search by postcode: in England the Environment Agency's Check your long term flood risk service (built on the National Flood Risk Assessment data published in January 2025), in Scotland SEPA's flood maps, in Wales the Flood Risk Assessment Wales map and in Northern Ireland DfI Rivers' Flood Maps (NI). Each shows the risk for an area, not a building, so record the result per site with the date you checked.

Updated 19 October 2026 by the Carbon Recycling team. Figures use the official UK government conversion factors and are checked against the current gov.uk guidance.

Before you start

Have the full address and postcode of each site you use: offices, shops, warehouses, workshops, depots, and anywhere you rent storage. Check each one separately, even if they are in the same town. Surface water risk can change from one street to the next.

Every service below shows the risk for an area, not whether a particular building will flood. They also don't cover flooding from blocked drains or burst pipes. Write the result down as area risk, and add what you know about the building. Our climate risk assessment guide has a one-row-per-site table to put the results in.

England: Check your long term flood risk

Go to Check the long term flood risk for an area in England on GOV.UK and start the service.
Enter the postcode, then choose the address or the point on the map.
Read the result for each source separately: rivers and the sea, surface water, reservoirs and, where there is data, groundwater.
Look at the climate change view, which shows how the chance of flooding could increase in the area.
Take a screenshot of each result and note the date.

The results use four bands for rivers and the sea, and the same for surface water:

High: more than a 3.3% chance of flooding each year (1 in 30)
Medium: between 1% and 3.3%
Low: between 0.1% and 1%
Very low: less than 0.1%

Since January 2025 the service has used the Environment Agency's new National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA), which combines thousands of local flood models with a new national model and includes climate change scenarios based on the Met Office's UKCP18 projections. If you last looked before 2025, look again: the result for your area may have changed. Rivers and sea results take flood defences into account, and defences can be overtopped or fail.

If you are planning to build or extend, this is the wrong map. The service says its rivers, sea and surface water information is not suitable for flood risk assessments for planning, because planning ignores defences in case they fail. Use the Flood map for planning instead.

Scotland: SEPA flood maps

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency's flood maps show areas likely to flood from rivers, the sea and surface water, now and in the future with climate change. Search by postcode or move around the map. SEPA's bands are different from England's:

High likelihood: at least a 10% chance of flooding each year
Medium likelihood: at least a 0.5% chance each year
Low likelihood: at least a 0.1% chance each year

So a "high" in Scotland is a much more frequent flood than a "high" in England. If you have sites in both, record the percentage as well as the word. SEPA also publishes the maps as GIS data under the Open Government Licence, which helps if you have many sites.

Wales: Flood Risk Assessment Wales map

Natural Resources Wales's Flood Risk Assessment Wales map shows the risk from rivers, the sea, surface water and small watercourses, and reservoirs, plus flood defences and the areas that benefit from them. You can also check by postcode. Results are high, medium, low or very low; for rivers and surface water, high means more than a 1 in 30 (3.3%) chance each year.

Two things to note. The risk levels don't allow for defences failing or channels and drains getting blocked, which could make flooding worse. And NRW says the map has no official status for planning: for development, use the Flood Map for Planning. Together the two make up the Wales Flood Map.

Northern Ireland: Flood Maps (NI)

The Department for Infrastructure's Rivers team publishes Flood Maps (NI), an interactive viewer of flood hazard from rivers, the sea and surface water. Detailed maps cover 69 areas (20 Significant Flood Risk Areas and 49 Areas for Further Study). Everywhere else shows the older strategic maps, which DfI says are not accurate enough to judge the risk to a particular property or point. Note which kind of map covers your site. The viewer needs pop-ups enabled.

What to write down for each site

The site name and postcode.
The service and the date you checked it.
The band and percentage for each source: rivers and sea, surface water, and reservoirs where shown.
The future picture where the service shows one.
What you know about the building: floor level, basement, past flooding, what sits at ground level.
What you do about it: flood warnings, a flood plan, raised storage, insurance, a fallback site.

Then sign up for warnings. In England the Environment Agency's flood warning service covers organisations as well as homes, by text, phone or email; Floodline is on 0345 988 1188. SEPA's Floodline and NRW's free warning service do the same in Scotland and Wales.

A customer or tender may ask for exactly this. Our post on climate risk questions in tenders shows how to turn the table into an answer, and climate risk for suppliers explains where it fits in a TCFD-style reply.

How Carbon Recycling helps

Carbon Recycling keeps each of your sites with its postcode and gives you a carbon report per site, alongside your SECR report and Carbon Reduction Plan.Starter covers 2 sites, Growth 10 and Enterprise 100. The Climate risk add-on, coming soon, adds flood and heat risk for each of your sites, with a climate risk summary for a tender or a TCFD-style report, so you don't have to look up each postcode by hand.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check the flood risk for a business address in England?

Use the Environment Agency's free Check your long term flood risk service on GOV.UK. Enter the postcode, pick the address or point on the map, and it shows the long term risk from rivers and the sea, surface water, reservoirs and, where there is data, groundwater, with a view of how climate change could change it.

What do high, medium and low flood risk mean?

In England, high means more than a 3.3% (1 in 30) chance of flooding each year, medium 1% to 3.3%, low 0.1% to 1% and very low less than 0.1%. Wales uses similar bands. In Scotland, SEPA's high means at least a 10% chance each year, medium at least 0.5% and low at least 0.1%.

Is the result for my building or my area?

Your area. All four UK flood map services say they do not tell you whether a particular property will flood. Your building's floor level, past flooding and what you store at ground level decide the real impact.

Can I use these maps for a planning application?

Not the long term risk ones. In England, use the Flood map for planning; in Wales, the Flood Map for Planning. SEPA's flood maps are designed to support planning decisions in Scotland, and DfI Rivers' Flood Maps (NI) are meant to flag where flooding matters for planning in Northern Ireland.

How do I get flood warnings for my premises?

In England, sign up on GOV.UK for Environment Agency flood warnings by text, phone or email; the service covers homes and organisations. Floodline is on 0345 988 1188. SEPA runs Floodline in Scotland and Natural Resources Wales runs a free flood warning service in Wales.

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