Flood risk when buying a house

[RastaManBob]

Hello,

I am currently viewing houses, a first time buyer, and one of the (numerous) things I've been researching is flood risk. The Government have a useful website available at: https://www.gov.uk/check-flood-risk One feature of the website is long term flood risk information: https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/long-term-flood-risk This gives detailed open water (rivers, sea, etc) flood risk and surface water (rainfall, drainage, etc) flood risk.

One of the properties that I am interested in has a very low open water flood risk (a chance of flooding of less than 0.1%) and a high surface water flood risk (a chance of flooding of greater than 3.3%). This does concern me but the latter does have a disclaimer:

This information is suitable for identifying which parts of counties or towns are at risk, or have the most risk. It's also suitable for identifying the approximate extent of flooding and the shallower and deeper areas of flooding. It's unlikely to be reliable for a local area and very unlikely to be reliable for identifying individual properties at risk.​

Are you aware of any other source of information for helping to determine flood risk? I don't think I'd like to take on the risk but I also do not want to write off the property on the basis of information that may not be reliable in identifying risk down the level of an individual property, especially given that I prefer the property to a similarly located and priced property that does not flag up risk on the same websites.

Any information and/or advice greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[Maccapacca]

Google town or area and flooding.

The EA are spending gazillions improving flood defence so be aware or areas that may be now flood risks but in a few years safe for another 100 years.

 

[Rroff]

Shows my house as high surface water risk - interestingly the shaded map is reasonably accurate - it does come down our road pretty bad now and again after major rainfall however it never comes close to flooding our property.

 

[=XDC=FluphyBunny]

A village near us has been having flood defences 'improved', for, well, forever. They still flood every time they get heavy rain. Aside from the damage which can be extensive, for the worst, their insurance is non-existent. Make certain you check every detail.

 

[Werewolf]

It's worth noting that flood risk can just be the general area, and that even if the area is listed as such that doesn't mean the buildings are unduly at risk.
My parents house is in a flood area but the only part of the property to flood in the last 30 years is part of the back garden, which is 3-4 foot lower than the house (yet because of that they couldn't get insurance for under £3k for a while, whilst the property next door built the same distance from the stream, at the same height managed fine).
IIRC the only time they ever had a problem was about 30 years ago when the water level in a stream was high enough it hit the underside of the local bridge which acted as a dam, so the water built up and entered the road network causing every local road near them to have a few inches of water.
The bridge was fairly rapidly replaced with one that didn't dip into the cutting the stream ran through after that

Getting insurance even with floodRE can be a real pain in the neck, I've been the one in charge of trying to get it for the last few years and it has taken about 4 hours on the phone each time, as a minimum trying multiple insurance companies (some just say "sorry try this broker", others run it all the way through the system).
It doesn't help with our area that they built a bunch of houses across the stream from my parents house, at a lower level, and those newer houses basically flooded every couple of years for a long time.

I had to go through it again this year because I noticed that Direct Line had offered a renewal but had ticked the "no the property has not been affected by flooding" box, which was subtly different to last years "has the property been damaged by flooding" when I rang to query they decided they didn't want to quote for renewal.
Which I guess goes to show you should always check your renewal documents, as the information they had for the account hadn't changed, but the wording of the question had.

In short the flood maps don't tell the whole story, every house on our street is within a "flood risk", yet only 4 (those nearest the stream, with long gardens) have actually had any water onto the property from flooding in the last 25-30 years, and even then no damage to the houses or garages (as they're built at street level, not garden level).