Flood Risk Assessment in Carlisle

A flood risk assessment in Carlisle has to start with the rivers. The Caldew and the Petteril join the Eden inside the city, all three are main rivers, and in December 2015 they flooded 2,128 properties behind defences built after the 2005 flood. We prepare flood risk assessments in Carlisle for planning applications, house purchases, lenders and insurers, together with sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies.

Here, Carlisle means the city's built-up area: the centre and Rickergate, Stanwix and Belah north of the Eden, Caldewgate, Willowholme and Denton Holme along the Caldew, Botcherby, Harraby and Upperby by the Petteril, and Currock, Morton and Kingstown, across the CA1, CA2 and CA3 postcode districts. Cumberland Council has been the planning authority and the Lead Local Flood Authority here since Cumbria County Council was abolished in April 2023. The wider county, from the Solway to Morecambe Bay, is covered on our Cumbria page.

At 09:15 on 6 December 2015 the Eden reached 7.8 m on the Sheepmount gauge, 0.6 m above the 2005 record, and came over walls built for a 1 in 200 year flood. No defence breached, and the city still flooded.

To talk through a site anywhere in Carlisle, call our flood risk consultants on 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.

Where the Eden, Caldew and Petteril meet: Carlisle's flood sources

River flooding is the main risk in Carlisle, and the city can flood from the Eden, the Caldew or the Petteril on its own or from all three at once, as the Local Plan and the 2011 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment (SFRA) both note. Smaller main rivers and becks add risk of their own, and several, Parham Beck and the Little Caldew among them, have their own Environment Agency warning area.

Water can also rise from below or run off the streets. The SFRA marks the river gravels at Botcherby, Rickerby, Willowholme, Caldewgate and Shaddongate as susceptible to groundwater, though the Environment Agency then held no record of groundwater flooding in the city. Readings from the Sheepmount, Cummersdale and Botcherby Bridge gauges are on our live river levels map, and our River Eden page follows the whole catchment from Mallerstang to the Solway.

Carlisle on the flood map: Stanwix to Harraby

Enter a Carlisle postcode in the tool below to screen it against Environment Agency data for rivers, surface water and reservoirs, or open our full flood risk map. The planning flood zones leave the defences out, so much of the riverside city shows as Flood Zone 3 even where a wall stands between the street and the river.

When Carlisle flooded: 2005, Storm Desmond and since

Carlisle floods often and badly, and the Section 19 report on the 2015 flood lists notable floods in 1771, 1822, 1856, 1925 and 1968 before the modern events below. Both of the largest recent floods went beyond the defences standing at the time.

1. January 2005. 1,865 properties flooded and three people died. The Eden reached 1,516 m³/s at Sheepmount and 7.2 m on the gauge, roughly a 1 in 170 year flood. The defence scheme that followed was finished in 2010.
2. November 2009. The new defences, with temporary works covering one unfinished length, held a flow of 1,029 m³/s on the Eden. Fifteen properties flooded, mostly in areas the scheme did not protect.
3. June 2012. High water came mainly down the Caldew. With the Eden lower and the Caldew defences in place, the river stayed in its channel and flooding was minimal.
4. 5 and 6 December 2015. An early peak on 4 December had already filled the floodplains. Storm Desmond then sent the Petteril to its peak in the afternoon, the Caldew in the evening and the Eden to 1,680 m³/s the next morning, close to a 1 in 300 year flood. 2,128 properties flooded and about 1,450 behind the defences, mainly in Denton Holme, stayed dry.
5. The night of 5 December. Water over the Bitts Park and Dacre Road defences filled the Castle Way underpass around midnight, flooding Hardwicke Circus properties to depths of up to 2 m. Oil and diesel from motor trade premises at Willowholme spread through the floodwater, and Brunton Park, Carlisle United's ground, went under.
6. 2024. Cumberland Council investigated flooding in villages just outside the city, publishing Section 19 reports for Dalston, Scotby, Cumwhinton, Great Corby and the Stockdalewath area.

The Environment Agency issues warnings for the Eden, Caldew, Petteril and Little Caldew through more than ten warning areas in and around the city, listed in the contacts table below.

Flood prevention in Carlisle: two generations of defences

Carlisle's defences came in two rounds: £38m of walls and embankments after the 2005 flood, then £25m of raising after Storm Desmond that has reached Warwick Road and the centre but not yet the Caldew. The first round was overtopped in 2015; the second was built to hold floods as high as the ones Desmond brought.

• After 2005. The Environment Agency spent £38m on the Eden and Petteril scheme in the east, finished in 2007, and the Caldew and Carlisle City scheme in the west, finished in 2010, with smaller works at Etterby Terrace and Harraby Green. They were built to a 1 in 200 year standard with an allowance for climate change. In 2016 the city had more than 6.3 km of raised embankment, 5 km of flood wall, two storage basins, two pumping stations and 32 floodgates.
• Phase 1, Warwick Road. The Melbourne Park embankments were raised and extended, the walls below Botcherby Bridge raised, a floodgate fitted at the Warwick Road Tesco and 3 km of Eden embankment raised between the Tesco store and Trinity School, finishing in August 2021. The Environment Agency puts the post-Desmond spending at £25m and says it protects more than 2,100 homes.
• Phase 2, the centre. Almost 1,000 m of walls, embankments, gates and a raised road from Trinity School playing fields to the castle, started in August 2020 and watertight by the end of April 2021. It cuts the risk to 50 homes and 33 other properties, the Sands Centre and Civic Centre among them, and to Hardwicke Circus, Castle Way and the A7 over Eden Bridge.
• Phase 1b, Adelaide Street. A wall around the Adelaide Street allotments, finished in September 2024, closes a route by which a flood the size of Desmond could have bypassed the Melbourne Park defences into the western Warwick Road area.
• The Caldew, still waiting. Raising the Caldew defences through Denton Holme and Willowholme was set aside in 2021 as offering too little long-term benefit. A Caldew flood risk management scheme is now being appraised, with £405,000 allocated for 2026/27 after £300,000 the year before. No construction date has been set.

None of this lowers a flood zone. The Flood Map for Planning shows land as if the defences were not there, so a defended street in Botcherby or Denton Holme can still be in Flood Zone 3, and the assessment has to deal with water coming over or through the line. Our guides to why a site stays in a flood zone after new defences are built and residual flood risk explain how that works. Scheme updates are posted on The Flood Hub's Carlisle page.

What a breach would mean behind the Rickergate and Willowholme walls

Behind Carlisle's defences, policy CC 4 asks an assessment to consider overtopping in extreme floods and, where it applies, a breach. The 2011 SFRA modelled breaches of the Eden and Caldew defences in five protected areas, and the outcomes differ sharply from one street to the next.

Two cautions apply. The SFRA predates Storm Desmond and both later rounds of raising, so its breach outputs are a starting point rather than an answer for a site today. And the council discourages more vulnerable uses, homes among them, close to the defences, where a breach or overtopping would do most harm. Floor levels set against these depths are worked in metres above Ordnance Datum, which is not the same as the stage readings on a river gauge such as Sheepmount.

Policies CC 4 and CC 5: the rules behind a Carlisle application

Cumberland Council decides Carlisle planning applications against the Carlisle District Local Plan 2015 to 2030, adopted on 8 November 2016, which remains in force until the new Cumberland Local Plan replaces it; that plan's adoption is timetabled for March 2028. Two policies deal with flooding and drainage.

• CC 4: when an assessment is needed. For every proposal of a hectare or more in Flood Zone 1; for Flood Zone 1 sites with surface water concerns or named as an area of concern in the county's flood strategy; and for all new development in Flood Zones 2 and 3, including minor development and changes of use.
• CC 4: what it must show. Flooding from any source with climate change, no added risk elsewhere, no lower-risk site available, mitigation, safe access and egress, floodplain storage, sewer and water capacity agreed with the utilities, and the residual risk that remains behind defences.
• CC 5: where surface water goes. Into the ground first, then attenuated to a watercourse, then to a surface water sewer or highway drain, and to a combined sewer only as a last resort, with evidence that nothing else works and an agreed rate that allows for climate change.
• Sites the plan allocates. Allocations have already passed the sequential test, so they need no separate one. A windfall site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 does.

Nationally, a Carlisle application sits under chapter 18 of the August 2026 NPPF: policy F4 sets when an assessment is needed, F5 and F6 the sequential and exception tests, and F8 expects drainage to follow the 2025 National Standards for sustainable drainage. Our summary of the August 2026 NPPF flood and drainage changes sets out what changed.

As Lead Local Flood Authority, Cumberland Council comments on the surface water side of major applications and gives drainage pre-application advice on schemes of five or more homes and on commercial or industrial proposals. The flood evidence behind the plan is the November 2011 Carlisle SFRA, prepared by Atkins for the former city council, with a second-stage study of the defended centre. Land south of the city is to be planned through a separate St Cuthbert's Garden Village Local Plan for about 10,000 homes, which had not been adopted by October 2026.

Away from the rivers: drains, sewers and soakaways in Carlisle

In 2015 surface water reached parts of Carlisle before the rivers did: the county's flood strategy action plan records drains overwhelmed in the centre and around Brunton Crescent before any defence was overtopped. That plan lists 76 local flood hotspots in the former Carlisle district, seven of them high priority, and several sit inside the city.

• Wigton Road. A combined sewer is taking roof water it was not built for. United Utilities has been surveying the cross-connections, and a Wigton Road surface water scheme has £40,000 for 2026/27.
• Haig Road, Harraby. All the surface water drains to a combined sewer designed for a 1 in 30 year storm, and groundwater adds to the problem; a wider Harraby surface water investigation is in the programme.
• Borland Avenue. Flooding from surface water recurs here because the culverts silt up.
• Stanhope Road and Dalston Road. The junction floods from the main river beside it, and the strategy ties the fix to the Environment Agency's Caldew work.
• Willowholme. The Environment Agency runs a surface water warning area here, for flooding from rain and drainage problems, alongside the river warning areas.

Infiltration seldom answers this on its own. The 2011 SFRA describes clayey till of low permeability across the Carlisle plain, with sandier alluvium near the Eden, so the first option under CC 5 often fails its test and attenuation takes over. Our guide to BRE 365 infiltration testing explains the test, and the ground conditions checker gives a first indication for a postcode.

The Cumbria Development Design Guide was written by the old county council and is still the drainage guidance Cumberland Council uses, with a drainage checklist in its appendix 7.

Carlisle sites that need an assessment, from terraces to the garden village

Because CC 4 names minor development and changes of use in Flood Zones 2 and 3, the requirement reaches well beyond new estates, and a flat conversion or a small workshop on the Caldew can need a flood risk assessment as surely as a housing site. The table sets out the usual cases.

Our guides to converting a house into flats and the Environment Agency's standing advice cover two of the commonest Carlisle cases.

Reports for Carlisle sites, from Warwick Road to Willowholme

We work on Carlisle sites for developers and housebuilders, architects, planning agents, homeowners, buyers and local firms. The three main reports answer different questions: is the site safe, should it be built there at all, and where will its rainwater go. A riverside scheme here often needs more than one of them.

• Rivers, sewers and breach in one report. Where the Eden, Caldew and Petteril can all rise in one storm, a flood risk assessment has to cover each river, the becks, surface water and what follows if a defence is overtopped.
• Applications to Cumberland Council. From a change of use in Caldewgate to new homes in Botcherby, a flood risk assessment for planning sets out the evidence policy CC 4 lists, residual risk behind the defences included.
• Before exchange on a Carlisle house. Many homes in Warwick Road, Denton Holme and Botcherby flooded in 2005, in 2015 or in both, and a flood risk survey for property purchase reads that record against the defences now in place.
• Windfall sites by the rivers. Only the Local Plan allocations have been sequentially tested, so an unallocated site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 needs its own sequential and exception test.
• Till, combined sewers and CC 5. On low-permeability ground, with combined sewers already overloaded at Wigton Road and Haig Road, a drainage strategy has to show where the water goes before any sewer is considered.
• Greenfield rates for every storm. A surface water drainage strategy holds runoff to greenfield peak rates for the 1, 30 and 100-year storms and to the greenfield volume for the 100-year, six-hour event, as the Cumbria guide requires.
• After the decision. Where a Carlisle permission reserves the drainage details by condition, we prepare the information for the discharge of drainage conditions before work starts.
• Levels the SFRA cannot give. The 2011 breach runs predate Storm Desmond and both later rounds of raising, so a site close to the walls may need flood modelling of the Eden or Caldew defences for current depths and speeds.
• Getting out before the water arrives. More than ten warning areas cover parts of the city, from Harraby Green to Willowholme, and a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out how occupants of a defended building leave before the water arrives.
• Water in the river gravels. The SFRA marks Botcherby, Willowholme and Caldewgate as susceptible to groundwater, and the county strategy records it at Haig Road, so a basement or soakaway there may call for a groundwater flood risk assessment.
• Streets with a flood history. With 1,865 properties flooded in 2005 and 2,128 in 2015, insurance flood risk assessments help owners and buyers answer an insurer's questions about that record.
• Industrial land at Willowholme. Motor trade and industrial premises at Willowholme flooded in 2015 and were left coated in oil and diesel, so due diligence flood risk assessments help buyers and lenders judge a site there.
• Premises around Hardwicke Circus. The Civic Centre and the businesses around Hardwicke Circus flooded to depths of up to 2 m in 2015, and business continuity flood assessments plan how a firm keeps trading through the next one.
• Combined sewers under strain. Where rainwater already overloads the combined sewers, as at Wigton Road and Haig Road, a larger scheme may need a foul drainage strategy showing the network can take its flows, as CC 4 expects.
• Land south of the city. With about 10,000 homes planned at St Cuthbert's Garden Village, promoters and landowners at Carlisle South use a flood risk feasibility study to test land before an option or a bid.

Reporting flooding in Carlisle and getting warnings

Which body to call in Carlisle depends on where the water is coming from. If a flood puts anyone in danger, call 999, and call 105 if it has cut the power. The Environment Agency warns for the Eden, Caldew, Petteril and Little Caldew, and its warning areas run street by street through the city.

The Cumbria flood strategy, adopted in November 2022 and carried forward by Cumberland Council, sets out how these bodies share the work.

Carlisle flooding questions from buyers, owners and developers

To discuss a site anywhere in Carlisle, from Stanwix to Upperby, call our chartered flood risk consultants on 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. Every report is checked and signed off by a senior consultant, and Unda Consulting Limited is a CIWEM Business Partner. Elsewhere in Cumbria we cover Cockermouth and Kendal, and across the Pennines Hexham in the Tyne valley; see every area we cover.