Straight answers to the usual questions

Usually yes if any part of the site is in Flood Zone 2 or 3, if the site is larger than one hectare, if it sits in an area the council has identified as having critical drainage problems, or if the mapping shows a risk from surface water, groundwater or the sewer network. Your local authority validation checklist is the definitive answer, and it varies between authorities. Send us the postcode and we will check it before you spend anything.

Not automatically. Flood Zone 1 only describes the risk from rivers and the sea. Surface water flooding causes a large share of the problems we see, and it is not shown on the flood zone map at all. Sites over one hectare in Flood Zone 1 still need an assessment, and many authorities ask for a drainage strategy regardless of zone.

The part we control is quick. The part we do not is the data: where a report needs modelled flood levels from the Environment Agency, their data request runs to its own timetable, and that usually sets the date. We tell you the realistic delivery date in the proposal rather than after you have paid. If you are working to a submission deadline, say so in your first email and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable.

We quote a fixed fee for each project rather than publishing a rate, because the work varies so much. The things that move the price are the flood zone, whether modelled data already exists for that reach of river, how many separate documents the authority wants, and whether a sequential test is needed. You get the figure before any work starts.

No — and it is worth being wary of anyone who says otherwise. The decision belongs to the planning authority and it weighs far more than flood risk. What a good report does is make sure flood risk is not the reason for a refusal: the right data, the tests the officer actually has to apply, and the residual risk dealt with rather than glossed over.

A flood risk assessment is about water arriving at your site — from the river, the sea, the ground or the surface. A drainage strategy is about water leaving it: where the rain that lands on your new roofs and hardstanding goes, and how you stop the development making things worse downstream. Many applications need both, and they are reviewed by different people — the Environment Agency tends to look at the first, the lead local flood authority at the second.

It is the planning authority asking: could this development reasonably go somewhere at lower flood risk instead? You provide the evidence — a search area agreed with the case officer, the sites available within it, and clear reasons why each was discounted. It is a policy argument rather than a technical one, and it fails most often because the search area was never agreed at the start.

Often, yes. Objections are frequently about something specific and fixable — floor levels set from the wrong datum, compensation storage not demonstrated, an access route that was never assessed, or a report that used the public flood map where modelled levels exist. Send us the objection letter and the report it refers to, and we will tell you what it would take to answer it.

Freeboard is the deliberate gap between the design flood level and your finished floor level — a safety margin for the things a model cannot predict precisely, like wave action, blockages or the uncertainty in the model itself. Three hundred millimetres is the figure most authorities work to for residential development, but some ask for more, and it is worth checking locally rather than assuming.

To quote: the site address or postcode, and a sentence about what you want to build. To do the work: a location plan, existing and proposed layouts, and a topographic survey with levels tied to Ordnance Datum if one exists. If there is no level survey we will tell you whether the report can proceed without one — for some sites it can, for others it is the single most important piece of information.

Yes. The Thames is where we work most often and know the local authority expectations best, but flood risk assessment is a national methodology and we take on work across England and Wales. In Wales the equivalent document is a Flood Consequence Assessment and the policy tests differ, so tell us where the site is at the outset.

No, and authorities are alert to it being used that way. An emergency plan manages residual risk once the design is already safe — it does not make an unsafe site acceptable, and it does not replace the Exception Test where that applies. If a plan is being offered as the whole answer, expect questions.