dataset · England
Historic Flood Map
The Historic Flood Map is a GIS layer showing the maximum extent of individual Recorded Flood Outlines from river, the sea and groundwater springs that meet a set criteria. It shows areas of land that have previously been subject to flooding in England. This excludes flooding from surface water, except in areas where it is impossible to determine whether the source is fluvial or surface water but the dominant source is fluvial. The majority of records began in 1946 when predecessor bodies to the
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Licence: ["There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.", "There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the
Evidence quality: 67.7
Listed in data.gov.uk public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- historic flood extents (maximum extent of Recorded Flood Outlines from river, sea and groundwater springs)
- Coverage docs-verified
- England · Majority of records from 1946; limited details for earlier incidents
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Quarterly
- Formats docs-verified
- OGC API Features · WFS · WMS · Shapefile (ZIP) · GeoPackage (ZIP) · GeoJSON (ZIP) · File Geodatabase (ZIP) · ArcGIS layer file (.lyr)
- Access docs-verified
- Free and open; no public access constraints. Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Screening a site against recorded historic fluvial, coastal and groundwater-spring flooding in England for a flood risk assessment · Overlaying historic flood extents on development or drainage layouts as a constraints map for planning submissions · Validating modelled flood extents against recorded historic outlines
- Audience llm-inferred
- flood consultants · hydrologists · drainage engineers · planners · GIS analysts
Limitations
- Constraints docs-verified
- Excludes surface water flooding, except where the dominant source is fluvial · Absence from the layer does not mean an area has never flooded · Limited incident detail before 1946 · Flooding is shown to land and does not necessarily mean properties flooded internally · Outlines that do not meet inclusion criteria sit in the separate Recorded Flood Outlines dataset
Evidence
- https://environment.data.gov.uk/api/file/download?fileDataSetId=c3e82575-35c8-4ebe-ae39-c6f7b2fcfe40&fileName=Data Version.txt
- https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/76292bec-7d8b-43e8-9c98-02734fd89c81/historic-flood-map1
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.