Flood risk and coastal change

Publication Year

2025

Document Status

Current

Abstract

Comprises planning practice guidance focusing on flooding and coastal change in the planning process. Covers: planning and flood risk; taking flood risk into account in preparing plans; site-specific flood risk assessment; sequential approach to the location of development; exception test; role of the Environment Agency and lead local flood authorities in assessing planning applications; addressing residual flood risk; other flood risk considerations; flood risk issues raised by minor developments; flood risk issues raised by changes of use; permitted development rights and flood risk; proximity to watercourses and need for a flood risk activity permit; sustainable drainage systems (SuDS); reducing the causes and impacts of flooding; flood resistance and flood resilience; planning and development in areas of coastal change; flood zone and flood risk tables; and site-specific flood risk assessment: checklist.

Document History

Last updated: 17 September 2025 - Updates to paragraphs 23, 27 and 28. Addition of paragraph 27a. Sourced from: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/flood-risk-and-coastal-change and converted to pdf. Whilst we endeavour to capture all updates it is subject to receiving alerts from the publisher and there may be formatting or punctuation changes applied to the html version that do not affect the text. Document type: guidance. First published: 6 March 2014.

Publisher Information