Flood Risk Assessment in Barking

A flood risk assessment in Barking turns on the River Roding and the gate at its mouth. The Roding runs tidal past the town centre as Barking Creek and meets the Thames at Creekmouth, where the Barking Barrier can be lowered against a surge tide. Behind those defences lie the town centre, Thames View and Barking Riverside, all on low ground. For Barking sites we write flood risk assessments for planning, purchase, mortgage and insurance, sequential and exception tests, and surface water drainage strategies.

On this page Barking means seven wards of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, which between them cover most of the IG11 postcode district. Abbey and Northbury hold Barking town centre and the station, and Gascoigne runs south beside the Roding to the A13. Longbridge takes in Upney and Barking Park, and Eastbury covers Eastbury Manor and Castle Green. South of the A13, the Thames View ward includes the Thames View estate, River Road and Creekmouth, and the Barking Riverside ward follows the river east to the edge of Dagenham Dock. Mayesbrook ward and the Becontree estate to the north-east, and Beckton and East Ham across the creek in Newham, fall outside the outline.

When the Barking Barrier is down, the Roding backs up inside Barking Creek. The council's flood study says a closure changes extreme water levels for up to 6 km upstream, through the middle of the town.

To discuss a Barking site with one of our consultants, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.

The Barking Barrier and the tidal River Roding

Barking's protection from a North Sea surge is a gate across Barking Creek, separate from the Thames Barrier upriver near Woolwich. The Barking Creek Barrier was authorised in 1975 and built between 1979 and 1983, a generation after the 1953 flood at Creekmouth. Its main gate is about 38 m wide and weighs some 320 tonnes. It falls under its own weight, so it can still close in a power cut, and takes around 45 minutes to lower (IanVisits on the Barking Creek Barrier). Our article on Thames Barrier closures covers how the wider estuary system is run.

• Tidal for 9 km. The 2017 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment (SFRA) says the tide influences the Roding for 9 km above the Barrier.
• Room behind the gate. While the gate is shut, Barking Creek can store a river flow with a 1-in-2 chance in any year. A bigger flow depends on the height of the walls.
• Walls at 5.3 to 6.5 m AOD. Defences line the lower 7 km of the Roding and the creek. Near the Frogmore estate and Gascoigne Road, a 2006 Environment Agency project raised the New England Embankment from 5.7 to 6.2 m AOD.
• A low point at Crows Road. Environment Agency mapping of the lower Roding found a dip in the defences beside Crows Road, south of the railway, where water could spill over in a flood with between a 1-in-200 and a 1-in-1,000 chance in a year.
• Extra flow from Beckton. On high Thames tides, Beckton Sewage Treatment Works on the west bank discharges into the Roding through an auxiliary outfall. That can add about 25 m³/s to a 1-in-100 river flow of about 80 m³/s.

Under the Thames Estuary 2100 plan, Barking is the western end of the Barking and Dagenham policy unit, which runs east from the Barking Barrier to the River Beam under policy P4: defences are to keep pace with climate change so that the risk does not grow. The unit has no riverside strategy yet. Councils are asked to plan their riverside by 2030, and defence owners to raise defences where needed by 2040. West of the creek, the Royal Docks unit begins at the Barrier under the same policy. The Roding and the Thames are both main rivers, so works on or near their banks go through the Environment Agency, not the council (main rivers and ordinary watercourses compared).

Look up a postcode from Barking Park to Barking Riverside

Type an IG11 postcode below to screen it for flooding from rivers and the sea, surface water and reservoirs, or use our full flood risk map for any address in England. The coral line follows the seven wards: the Roding and Barking Creek form its western edge, and Mayesbrook ward lies beyond it to the north-east. The flood zone a postcode returns is drawn as if the Barking Barrier and the river walls were not there, so most of the south of the town shows as Flood Zone 3. The government's long-term flood risk service counts the defences in, which is why one street can look very different on the two (how the two maps differ).

Creekmouth in 1953, and Barking's floods since

Barking's flood record has two strands: the tide on the night of the 1953 surge, and the Mayes Brook and the drains overflowing in heavy rain. The dates below come from local reporting and the council's 2017 flood study.

1. 1949. The River Roding Catchment Board reported serious and repeated flooding from the Mayes Brook around River Road and Clare Gardens, and blamed the undersized Barking Culvert for the worst of it.
2. 31 January 1953. The North Sea surge reached Barking Creek overnight. The Barking and Dagenham Post's anniversary feature records 63 houses flooded, most of them in the riverside village of Creekmouth, with about four feet of water running down River Road. No one there had house insurance, and the cottages were knocked down about three years later. Our article on the 1953 North Sea flood follows the same storm along the coast.
3. 1954. The Thames View estate was built nearby, and families flooded out of Creekmouth moved there.
4. 31 July 1968. Two inches of rain in an hour and a half on the Mayes Brook catchment flooded Westrow Drive, Salisbury Avenue and River Road.
5. 1983. The Barking Creek Barrier was completed at the mouth of the Roding.
6. Autumn 2000. The Roding flooded more than 200 properties along its length, worst upstream in Ilford. The SFRA puts the event at about a 1.4% chance in any year.
7. June 2016. Flooding from drains and runoff hit roads and some homes across the borough, Ripple Road, Whiting Avenue, Movers Lane and River Road in Barking among them.

Three Environment Agency areas show whether a flood warning is in force in Barking today: the Tidal Thames from The Mardyke to Barking Creek warning area, which names Creekmouth and South Barking; the River Roding in Barking warning area; and the wider Lower River Roding alert area. Our live river levels map shows the nearest river and tide gauges, and you can sign up for free flood warnings by phone, text or email.

What flood zone is Barking in, neighbourhood by neighbourhood?

Most of Barking south of the railway lies in Flood Zone 3, the zone with the highest chance of flooding, but nearly all of it is defended. The council's evidence describes each part of the town differently.

Behind the defences, rain is the likelier problem: the SFRA says surface water may pose the more real threat across the town centre, Gascoigne and Thames View. The Greater London Authority's 2026 regional flood risk assessment ranks Barking and Dagenham third in London for the share of its land at high risk of surface water flooding, at 14%. The SFRA's modelling picks out ponding around Salisbury Avenue and Greenslade Road, Whiting Avenue, Greatfields Park and Choats Road. Thames Water's register showed 47 sewer flooding incidents across the borough in the decade before 2017. The boroughs are working on the problem together under the 2025 to 2030 London Surface Water Strategy.

London Clay underlies most of the borough, which keeps the risk of groundwater flooding low. The exception is the alluvium and terrace gravels along the Roding, Loxford Water and around Greatfields Park, where groundwater can rise to within 2 m of the surface. The council's flood strategy notes that water in those gravels can rise with the river when tide and river levels are high. That matters for basements, lift pits and soakaways.

Barking town centre and Barking Riverside: where the new homes are going

The Local Plan expects more new homes in and around Barking than anywhere else in the borough, and nearly all of them on defended land. Policy SPP1, covering Barking town centre and the River Roding, gives an indicative capacity of 15,609 homes. SPP2, the Thames riverside, gives 14,294, including at least 11,162 at Barking Riverside and 2,000 at Thames Road.

• Barking Riverside. The former power station land was consented in 2007 for about 10,800 homes. In March 2026 the council's planning committee approved revisions allowing up to 20,000 homes on the 443-acre site (Construction Index report).
• The foreshore works. A £12m contract, due to start in February 2026, is lifting 500 m of the Thames defence crest at Barking Riverside from +7.1 mOD to +8.2 mOD, with swales, attenuation basins and storage tanks behind it (contract announcement).
• The town centre and the Roding. Riverside sites under SPP1 sit beside the tidal Roding, where policy DMSI 6 expects schemes to set buildings back from the defences, keep them in repair and show how they could be raised to TE2100 levels.
• Creekmouth and River Road. The industrial land at the mouth of the Roding is in defended Flood Zone 3 and has a record of drain flooding, so layout and drainage need settling before any change of use.

Smaller schemes raise the same questions on a smaller scale: a rear extension on the Thames View estate, flats over a shop near the station, or a workshop converted beside the creek. Each still needs its floor level checked against the breach level, and the council will ask how the site drains.

Policy DMSI 6, DMSI 7 and the SFRA's rules for Barking sites

Barking and Dagenham Council is the local planning authority and also the Lead Local Flood Authority, so it decides applications and advises on how they drain. The Environment Agency comments on the Thames, the Roding and their defences. The local tests are in the Barking and Dagenham Local Plan 2037, adopted on 18 September 2024.

• DMSI 6, flood risk. Schemes should leave flood risk the same or lower. A site that would fall into Flood Zone 2 or 3 once climate change is allowed for is treated as if it were there now, development goes on the lowest-risk part of the site, and basements and other uses that are not water-compatible are not appropriate in Flood Zone 3b.
• DMSI 6, the defences. Along the Thames and the tidal Roding, developers maintain or replace the defences for the life of the scheme, keep buildings back to leave room for future works, and seek to raise the walls to TE2100 levels or show how that can happen later.
• DMSI 7, water management. Permeable surfaces unless shown to be unavoidable; greenfield runoff as the aim, following the London Plan drainage hierarchy; SuDS in major development with a named maintenance plan; and an early enquiry to Thames Water on sewer capacity.
• Floors above the breach level. The SFRA asks for floors at least 0.3 m above the 1-in-200 tidal flood level in a breach, with climate change, and 0.6 m where the levels are uncertain or the use is highly vulnerable.
• Time to get out. Where a defended site cannot lift its floors clear, the SFRA asks developers to raise ground levels so a breach would take 10 hours or more to flood it.
• Basements. None in Flood Zone 3b and none for living space in undefended Flood Zone 3a. In defended Flood Zone 3a, less vulnerable basements are accepted only where breach water would take more than 5 hours to arrive.

Behind these rules is the Strategic Flood Risk Assessment Level 1, prepared by WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff in August 2017 to update the 2008 study. The council's Local Flood Risk Management Strategy ran from 2017 to 2023, and we have found no successor published since. Our guide to basements in a flood zone explains how the national rules sit alongside these local ones, and our note on residual flood risk covers the breach and overtopping case.

Across London, policies SI 12 and SI 13 of the London Plan 2021 still apply. A draft replacement plan closed for consultation on 15 October 2026 and is not expected to be adopted before 2028. Major schemes send the London SuDS proforma with their drainage strategy. Nationally, flood risk sits in chapter 18 of the NPPF: policy F4 sets when an assessment is needed, F5 and F6 the sequential and exception tests, and F8 expects all development to follow the 2025 National Standards for sustainable drainage.

Extensions, conversions and riverside towers: does each need a flood risk assessment in Barking?

Almost any new home south of the railway does, because that land is in Flood Zone 3 even with the defences in place. The table covers the cases that come up most often.

Where housing is proposed in Flood Zone 3 on land the plan has not allocated, the council will look for the sequential test before it weighs anything else.

Reports we prepare for Barking sites, from the Roding to the Thames foreshore

The right report depends on whether a site sits behind the creek walls, the Thames frontage or neither, and on who needs it. A senior consultant signs off each report; our consultants are chartered, and Unda is a CIWEM Business Partner.

• Homes on defended land. Most new housing south of the railway needs a flood risk assessment for planning that answers policy DMSI 6 and the SFRA rule on floor levels above a breach.
• Tide, river, rain and groundwater. A flood risk assessment for a Barking site weighs the Barrier and the creek walls against the Mayes Brook, surface water ponding and shallow groundwater near the Roding.
• Before exchange in Thames View or by the creek. Homes on the Thames View estate and new flats beside the Roding often prompt questions from lenders, and a flood risk survey for property purchase answers them for the building itself.
• New homes in Flood Zone 3. Housing on land the Local Plan has not allocated usually needs the sequential and exception test, and the exception test turns on how the site copes with a breach.
• Water off new roofs and roads. DMSI 7 sets greenfield runoff as the aim, and our drainage strategy work shows the council how a scheme gets there.
• Clay ground and outfalls that shut at high tide. Barking sits largely on London Clay and its brooks reach the river through sluices that close against the tide, so a surface water drainage strategy here tests infiltration first and then sizes storage for the hours an outfall is shut.
• Conditions on a consent. When the council attaches a drainage condition to a permission, we prepare the information needed for the discharge of drainage conditions.
• Levels for a site by the Roding. The SFRA notes that breach data for the eastern Roding embankment still date from the 2008 study, so where published levels do not fit a plot, flood modelling can set the water level that floors and access depend on.
• Ten hours to leave. Where a defended site cannot lift its floors clear, the SFRA asks for a breach to take 10 hours or more to arrive, and a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out how residents use that time, tied to the Tidal Thames from The Mardyke to Barking Creek warning area.
• Basements near the river. Shallow groundwater is mapped beside the Roding, Loxford Water and Greatfields Park, so a groundwater flood risk assessment is worth having before a basement or soakaway is fixed.
• Premiums on older homes. Barking's record runs from Creekmouth in 1953 to the Mayes Brook floods at Westrow Drive, and a flood risk assessment for insurance gives an underwriter facts about one property rather than a postcode.
• Industrial land changing hands. Sites around River Road, Creekmouth and Thames Road lie in defended Flood Zone 3 and have flooded from blocked drains before, so flood risk due diligence belongs before a purchase.
• Keeping a works open. Part of Barking Industrial Park lies in the functional floodplain, and a business continuity flood assessment helps an occupier plan for a flood that stops work.
• Large allocations. With capacity for more than 15,000 homes around the town centre and the Roding and over 11,000 at Barking Riverside, a flood risk feasibility study can test layouts and land value before an option is signed.
• Sewer capacity. DMSI 7 asks developers to confirm wastewater capacity with Thames Water early, and a foul drainage strategy sets out the connection and any upgrade it needs.
• Commercial floorspace. New workspace at Barking Riverside and on the employment land at Creekmouth often aims for a BREEAM rating, and a BREEAM flood risk assessment supports the Pol 03 credits.

Flood warnings and who to call in Barking

In an emergency where floodwater threatens life, the number is 999, and a power cut goes to 105. Day-to-day duties are shared between the bodies below.

Across the Thames from Barking Riverside, Thamesmead sits behind the same estuary defences, and upriver on the south bank Woolwich lies just east of the Thames Barrier. Past the Royal Docks, Stratford stands on the tidal Lea. The borough-wide rules are set out on our Barking and Dagenham council page, the river has its own River Thames page, and the full list of towns we write about is on the areas page.

Barking flood questions: the barrier, Barking Riverside and planning

Unda Consulting Limited prepares flood risk assessments, sequential and exception tests and drainage strategies for homes, workplaces and development land across Barking, from Upney and the town centre to Creekmouth and Barking Riverside. To talk about a site, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.