Flood risk assessment guidance for new development

This project developed a nationally consistent approach to assessing and managing flood risk for new developments across England and Wales.

Documents

Flood risk assessment guidance for new development: Phase 2 - final report (50KB) PDF

Flood risk assessment guidance for new development: Phase 2 - summary (557KB) PDF

Flood risk assessment guidance for new development: Phase 2 overview - technical report (718KB) PDF

Flood risk assessment guidance for new development: Phase 2 full documentation - technical report (2.9MB) PDF

Flood risk assessment guidance for new development: Phase 2 - project record (2.9MB) PDF

Flood hazard ratings and thresholds for development planning - project record (45KB) PDF

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Details

Objectives

Understanding and reducing the risks of flooding at new build developments is a high priority for the government and the Environment Agency. This project provided national procedures and guidance to help implement the government’s flood risk policies and guidance for new build developments. It created a framework and guidance to allow risk assessment at all levels, from individual developments through to the strategic, catchment and national scale. This project focused on developing a useful flood risk assessment (FRA) tool and a consistent approach for using FRAs to assess risks for specific sites. This included when considering the overall strategy for land use.

Outcomes

The main output of this project is a nationally consistent science-based framework, tools and guidance for assessing and managing flood risk for new developments. This has been achieved by bringing together and simplifying existing guidance. The latest findings from an extensive range of research projects and government / Environment Agency initiatives.

This project ran from 2003 to 2005 at a cost of £193,271.

Updates to this page

Published 26 March 2021