Buying a house in a flood risk zone…..

I’ve always thought I would buy on a flood plain (but not a steep sided valley like Boscastle ?? in Cornwall that suffered badly in a flash flood a few years ago). I don’t have lots of heavy or valuable antique furniture, flood proof the decs and off you go but reading some of these heartfelt stories makes me think that maybe I’m being rash.

I’ve always thought that wind will be the bigger threat with climate change as stuff here has never been built for 120 mph winds as seems likely to happen in the future. Personally I hate gales even if they don’t damage my buildings or trees.

new estates pooing up on flood plains

Yes, it’s not just rainwater, my friends have had the sewage backing up…

Having seen my family home go under twice in the last 11 years, I’d never buy anywhere near a river. When my parents moved in ~37 years ago there was a good amount of flood plain around them but numerous new estates have popped up on these plains and it’s a nightmare. 11 years ago it was about 5feet of water in the house, last winter the tide mark was over my head and I’m 6’00”.
Having to rush 300 miles to get them rescued from the upstairs of the house was a right royal pain in the arse then gut the downstairs of all their belonging’s for a second time in such a short time is bobbins.
According to my dad, my mother almost had a breakdown because of it. I was upset about it and I’ve not lived there for over 20 years so I dread to think what state she was in.

Watch from 3 minutes in and tell me you’d risk buying a house by the river. This team couldn’t reach my parents house which was in a deeper part only 2 streets away.

I must point out that all the mountain rescue/fire brigade/lifeboat fast water rescue teams did a tremendous job in Carlisle, went home/back to work then were called out to Yorkshire the following weekend.
I doft my cap to them.

I work in Op’s delivery for the EA and I wouldn’t live by a water course as long as i’ve got hole in my butt unless the house was on top of a big hill.

Hydrologists do flood analysis statistically:
Recurrence intervals and probabilities of occurrences – so you can get a one in a hundred year flood on two co-current years – or a 1:50 + 1:75 etc.

I also feel sorry for any one that’s downstream of our local, soon to be built on, ‘flood plains’ – the balancing lakes won’t cope.

My rented property is the closest house to the river tees in Middlesbrough.I wonder how safe things are this side of the Barrage?We also seem to be a bit prone to standing water accumulations.Ummmmm….

A 1 in 75 event is a likelihood of occurrence in any given year, not as has been alluded to, 1 chance every 75 years.

As a Flood Risk Professional I’m impressed by the attitude displayed here, it’s certainly not universal.

Wouldn’t touch it…

The idea that it’s not flooded before and that makes it ok is meaningless at a time with unprecedented numbers/extent and seriousness of flooding… the past is no guide whatsoever to the present or future at a time of unprecedented climate change!

Mate in the Lakes managed to stop his house getting flooded due to proactive use of sandbags. Neighbours not so lucky and apparently their house is now uninsurable (been flooded twice in two years I think).

A load of houses down near the Ouse near me have been on the market for months and months – really nice Victorian terraces and seem well priced. Then you speak to people who know the area and they tell you those streets flood regularly… so clearly buyers are already wary – and likely to be more so when you come to sell in the future…

In 2001 I bought a house in Mytholmroyd in the Calder Valley. My solicitors warned me it was on the flood plain but I thought “**** it – it’ll be OK.” No problem getting insurance.

I sold the house to an acquaintance in 2005. They now can’t sell it, as no-one wants to buy on the Calder Valley flood plain, after the floods of 2012 and 2015. They’re having to keep it and rent it out.

My points being:

1. Even just fifteen years ago, the thought of serious flooding in the Calder Valley was remote. But now it’s happened twice in four years and is likely to happen again. “There’ve never been any problems in the Tees Valley” is no guarantee of future safety.

2. When an area floods, inability to get insurance will be the least of your problems. You risk your house becoming impossible to sell.

3. Given the above, I genuinely think that, over the next few decades as extreme weather events become more frequent and flooding more common, it will be market forces that depopulate our flood plains.

4. There’s a mug in every card game, and if you don’t know who it is, it’s you! Meaning, I wouldn’t be solving someone else’s problem for them by buying their house that stands on a flood plain.

I lived atop of a hill in Wylam, about 100m from the Tyne, and we were classed at risk of flooding and charged a premium on our insurance.

Now we are talking a biblical flood to have reached us, we must have been a good 50m above the river level to start with and 100m or so away.

If we flooded, I don’t think we would be worrying about house insurance anymore.

What you need is a bund…..

as pointed out earlier quirrel its not always the river thats the issue.

im at 50m above sea level , my neighbour 600m away up at 52m with the nearest river 2km away – flooded last year – i didnt.

the run off from the fields congregated in the natural bowl he lives in – where as i am on the other side of the lip that forms the bowl – although i was only a foot away from the garage getting moist – thats still 5feet from getting into the house.

^ It would still have been biblical, nearly sheer drops around three quarters of the grounds of the house, and all fields slopping away steeply on the other side, as well as the drive.

I have some friends who live on the somerset levels, they love the house so they’ve accepted that it floods. the ground floor is effectively waterproof, tanked and tiled. sewers can be capped and sealed off. furniture can be easily moved and some larger items winched up to the ceiling.

takes a couple of hours to move out of the ground floor and once the flood waters receed, they can hose out the mud and move back in.

Depends entirely on the situation – I live just off the outfall from Coniston Water, in a village that floods. My house has a stream running down the side of it, which goes through a culvert and into the river, I think we are on the flood risk map too.

Usually this would put me right off a house, but the way ours is converted mean that the ground floor is essentially a basement (there is a spare bedroom down there, but nothing too critical).

Whilst the house purchase was working it’s way through we had some heavy weather and flooding in the area. Every day I drove past, checked out the stream and how much more capacity there looked to be through the culvert and figured that if it ever got bad enough to flood into the house we would have much bigger things to worry about!

So all is good!

Check out the house position, relative flood risks that you can determine and whether the risk is satisfactory to you – the flood maps are a good basis, and will have an implication on your insurance premiums, so weigh it all up and come to an informed decision 🙂

I live in the MTB mecca of West Norfolk, so according to all predictions, the whole county will soon be under water soon. Thankfully i live in rolling Brecklands, would hate to live down the road in Fen land

smogmonster – Member

Insurance doesnt seem a problem, with normal premiums when i check on GoCompare etc.

You will need to actually call the insurance companies to check this is correct, unfortunately they move as a herd as well so some years they are fine and others they all say no when they ask ‘Do you live near a river’. We live next to a river in Cumbria and our house is called Riverside I was surprised when renewing a couple of weeks ago that storm Desmond had not sent premiums through the roof.

That said every house is different last December our next door neighbour flooded because water ran down her path on the side of the house that doesn’t face the river. Our house had water running down the chimney and seeping through walls due to the sheer volume of rain lashing in which was awful but could happen anywhere, nearly half the village has been re-pointed this year. We did prepare for the first time for flood last December and it is exhausting both physically and mentally, although we did three houses as those around us are holiday homes. Thankfully it never reached us, I don’t think it ever will and I am comfortable with that but some people would worry.

A lot of attention is being drawn to old bridges not allowing enough water through and causing a dam effect especially if a tree gets lodged so this may be worth looking in to in case one is down stream.

I live in Carlisle. The flood capital of the North. Having seen the damage flooding can do to families and communities I wouldn’t go anywhere near any house that had a chance of flooding.

My wife works in conveyancing and it was one of the first things she looked at when we were choosing our home. Anything anywhere near a flood plain was out.

Carlisle has had biblical flooding twice in the last decade. On both occasions entire swathes of the community had to rehome themselves for months, sometimes over 12mths. Homes that were refitted to amazing standards were then reflooded and tbh I am not holding my breath this year for those that have only recently moved back into their homes.

Values are on the floor and insurance is next to impossible.

If I couldn’t afford to by the house away from the flood plain, I would lower my expectations and size requirements to get a home that is safe from flooding. This problem is going to get worse in the future, not better.

Sadly true, it’s only going to get wetter. In West Yorks/Calderdale etc they are building on fallow/flood plains more and more- where’s the water supposed to go?

Some ex-neighbours bought a place in a flood risk zone. I think they thought they were being very canny, buying a lower-priced property. It flooded before they’d even moved in, just after they’d had an expensive new kitchen fitted. They’ve just had a second child, and are currently in temporary rented accommodation. And it’s nearly christmas. I understand they are preparing a legal claim against the vendors, something to do with insufficient disclosure, but I don’t think they did their homework; it’s called a ‘flood risk zone’ for a reason.

Gets on my tits that. People are weighing up the ‘chances’ of getting a good deal on a house that has the possibility of flooding. I know similar people who brag about their big houses which they got at bargain prices. They are happy to take the benefits of the cheap big house until the floods come.

Then its the rescue services, the local council, the insurance companies and everyone elses responsibility to clear up the mess behind them.

There are families that have owned some of them houses for multiple decades and I really feel for them. They should be looked after. The ones who made a conscious decision wether to buy a property like, the OP for example, well I have zero sympathy if their house becomes of little value or ruined.

People are weighing up the ‘chances’ of getting a good deal on a house that has the possibility of flooding.

I remember of women on the news last year in the Keswick floods. She had recently bought her house in Keswick near the river.

She was disgusted that the council had allowed her house to flood.

The fact that she had made a decision to buy a house next to a flood risk river was irrelevant 🙄

OP dont turn out like this women.

a few nice shopping centers upstream with names like Riverside increasing the run off in wet weather, a few Austerity cuts to downstream dredging preventing that increased run off from escaping, and in a different county so there’s no one authority taking responsibility.

No thanks.

Hi

Like Pictonroad I’m a flood risk professional and have worked in the sector all of my professional life, fully agree that there are some very enlightened comments on here and is good to see.

Croft on Tees has extensive flood defences, look on the EA mapping on line to see if the property is in an ‘area benefitting from defences’ which should be mapped, I have worked on the defences in Croft and at the time they were built they were of a good standard but with new flood events and data and the advent of climate change understanding their standard of protection may not be what was considered at the time of construction.

However, the defences work well and the community behind them enjoys the benefit of defences.

The EA mapping has several forms – without defences mapping shows the ultimate risk and is used for planning purposes, there is a data set that looks at the risk with defences included and this is the key one – it is now called the Flood Risk from Rivers and the Sea map, it considers the likelihood of defences being overtopped or failing, this is probably where the 1 in 75 year assessment comes from.

It is all a question of ‘residual risk’, yes the area may be at risk of flooding but following the measures that have been built to reduce the likelihood or impact of that flooding what is the residual risk. I would suggest that the residual risk is fairly low.

Given our population centres being built by rivers due to industrial or transportation needs in the past we cannot simply turn our back on living in the floodplain, we need to adapt the properties that are already there and where we need to build properties in the future ensure they are built appropriately with resilience built in etc. If we simply said no development in the floodplain central London would have been mothballed many years ago…

However, given all of that would I buy a home in a floodplain? There aren’t many hills in York but I live on one of them… Just my choice informed by the industry I work in, but for many people living near a river brings many more benefits and can be enjoyed safely but it is key that we are all informed of the risks and understand how we can take steps to reduce their impact.

Sorry for the rambling thoughts.

Looking at this map: Flood map

It looks like the whole of Croft-On-Tees is a bit dodgy; unless you are buying an outlying property that sits more than 35m above sea level. I’d not touch anything inside those purple areas without flood protection and the dark area would be a complete no for me.

We live close ish (c. 400m) to water, but it’s a tiny little brook that gets quite fast flowing in heavy rain but never more than 3-4 metres across and maybe 2 metres deep at worst

But it’s down hill so would need a MAJOR problem for it to hit us

I don’t think I could live in a house that was a flood risk

The EA mapping has several forms – without defences mapping shows the ultimate risk and is used for planning purposes, there is a data set that looks at the risk with defences included and this is the key one – it is now called the Flood Risk from Rivers and the Sea map, it considers the likelihood of defences being overtopped or failing, this is probably where the 1 in 75 year assessment comes from.

It is all a question of ‘residual risk’, yes the area may be at risk of flooding but following the measures that have been built to reduce the likelihood or impact of that flooding what is the residual risk. I would suggest that the residual risk is fairly low.

I thought that the greater than 1 in 75 threshold band (=’High’ risk) is only used in the flood model which takes defences and their likely effectiveness into account, i.e. it IS the residual risk, and therefore the risk would not be ‘low’. (The planning model results are expressed using 1 in 200, 1 in 100 and 1 in 20 thresholds, no?)

With the level of expertise in every subject this is probably the place to ask a question from someone who isn’t educated in this type of thing.

Having lived in Carlisle all my life and gone through 2 x floods of near unmatched proportions.

1) How does building flood defences effect towns/villages up/downstream? If you take away a flood plain by building on it then you have an increase in water that needs to be funnelled somewhere. How is this dealt with?

2) How could they get the Carlisle flood defences so wrong. You can actually see from the ariel photgraphs, the flood defences working and moving the water to previously unflooding areas. It was a monumental disaster.

I don’t fully understand things but I know that if you build a dam, the water level increase behind it or goes around it. This is peoples lives they are messing with

The thing with flood risk mapping is that it is just that, risk mapping. If you’re in or near to the flood risk from rivers outline then there is a risk of flooding to the land your property is built on. As pointed out above, the exact nature of the risk needs to be understood based on local defences, flood routes, threshold levels etc. It’s just not possible to predict to total accuracy the exact outline and depth of flooding for every event.

A design event outline is calculated from a statistically probably weather event and calibrated against known events. The nature of weather means that the next flood event could act very differently.

I’ve been in a telephone conference with George Osbourne. Explaining that voterspeople could be flooded the winter after a £100m flood defence investment does not go down well. Such is the difficulty of applying a fixed economic model to a dynamic environment.

So, that’s still a no from this side. (I do live near the sea though…)

Slowster

Yes, you are right, high risk is 1 in 75 years or greater but the OP only stated ‘with a 1 in 75 year risk’.

The Flood Risk from Rivers and the Sea map looks at defences and their standard of protection and current condition ratings and assigns the areas behind them as having very low/low/medium/high risk in accordance with this, looking at the map for Croft there is an area of medium and low flood risk behind the bank meaning the risk is less than 1 in 75 years – the floodbank must still be considered to have a standard of protection of 1 in 100 years or so.

The way in which the industry talks about flood risk is being debated at present and we need to find better ways of conveying the risk simply and effectively, I guess this highlights this

I don’t know anything about the specifics of what happened in Carlisle, it’s a long way from my patch.

There appears to be a report online here:

Carlisle flood report

Scan reading the document it seems the event size was 1 in 300, the defences would not have been designed to protect against an event of this size.

The gov.uk page has fairly extensive Cumbria specific action plans

Cumbria action plan

The way in which the industry talks about flood risk is being debated at present and we need to find better ways of conveying the risk simply and effectively, I guess this highlights this

The majority of people are a lot more intelligent than they are given credit for, and IMO much of the problem comes from scientists and professionals using terminology which they think makes it easier for ordinary people to understand, but in fact only makes matters worse.

The Environment Agency’s previous use of the terms ‘Low’, ‘Moderate’ and ‘Significant’ risk is a good example, since Low was (and still is) actually worse than ‘normal’, and I suspect the word Significant was chosen deliberately to downplay the risk (if you tell people that they are at high risk, they will start to campaign for defences and put pressure on the EA and MPs).

I think it’s partly about you, too. I know 2 people who live in the same flooded street, one was absolutely heartbroken and I don’t think has really got over it, the other pretty much moved upstairs, claimed on the insurance and got on with it- it was a pain in the arse but it was just a thing that happened. Your sense of home and sanctity and feeling safe is a big deal with stuff like this, sort of like burglary.

Thanks for the advice folks….im definitely sat on the fence at the moment. The house is the old ‘house of our dreams’, which makes it really tough to be be totally objective about it. The head says dont take the risk, the heart – and the missus – says go for it, it might never happen. Like SteveW says, there are quite significant flood defences already in place…which even Storm Desmond didnt breach last year..though it came close, to within a couple of feet i hear. The EA says it is ‘Low risk’, a flood report obtained my solicitor says its Medium Risk on site..so who to believe. Im awaiting clarification if these assessments are based on the presence of the flood defences, or if they assume no defences. My head hurts!