The Environment Agency has set out its plans to publish new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion, including future scenarios accounting for climate change.

The Agency is planning to publish:

• new national coastal erosion risk mapping (NCERM2) later in 2024
• improvements to the national flood risk maps using the new national flood risk assessment (NaFRA2) by the end of 2024

The EA also said it intends to pause its regular updates of flood risk data as it gets ready to publish the new flood risk maps. The Agency normally update the flood risk information for rivers and sea every 3 months to reflect new local information.

The Agency said the pause will ensure that the improved maps are consistent with its current flood risk data and that it is also using this time to focus on making the newer data as good as it can be.

Updates have been paused for:

• flood zones on the Flood Map for Planning portal – these were last updated 1 November 2023
• risk of flooding from rivers and sea on the Check Your Long-Term Flood Risk – this was last updated 6 December 2023

The new flood risk information will be published by the end of 2024, with the Agency resuming regular updates,of the maps in 2025 every three months.

The EA said it will continue to update other data included on the Flood Map for Planning portal. This includes data relating to:

• flood history
• flood defences
• water storage areas
• Improvements to national coastal erosion risk mapping

Extensive coastal data sets for England have been gathered since the publication of the NCERM in 2012. This has been done by:

• the Environment Agency
• local authorities
• coastal monitoring programmes
• other coastal partners

The evidence has been used to provide the most up to date national assessment of coastal erosion risk for England - the new national coastal erosion risk information:

• uses coastal data and new methods to provide more reliable erosion predictions
• shows the coastal erosion risk information in a mapped format to be used by coastal managers, planners and decision makers
• will be publicly accessible to encourage wider understanding of coastal erosion risk

Future scenarios accounting for climate change

The EA will publish new national coastal erosion risk information accounting for climate change. The Agency is generating potential future scenarios using new techniques to model how erosion may increase with rising sea levels.

The Environment Agency is planning to publish improvements to the national flood risk maps by the end of 2024 - the result of the new NaFRA2.

The Agency said it is using new data and better methods and there will be changes to flood risk information in many areas. It also intends to publish flood risk data for national climate change scenarios for the first time, generating the scenarios using climate change allowances.

These are scenarios of anticipated change for:

• peak river flow
• peak rainfall intensity
• sea level rise
• offshore wind speed and extreme wave height

The Environment Agency is updating flood risk information using a new process which has been developed for the new NaFRA2. The process combines new and existing data to improve the national flood risk maps.

Lead local flood authorities and coastal risk management authorities are now being invited to review a draft version of the new surface water and coastal flood risk maps to help the EA make sure they are as high quality as possible ahead of publication.

The Environment Agency makes national flood risk data freely and openly available to a wide range of users via the Defra Data Services Platform (DSP).  This helps organisations with a role in flood risk management or with a need to plan their own operations.