Flood Risk Assessment in Chesterfield, Derbyshire

A flood risk assessment in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, begins in the valley floor where the River Hipper runs in from Brampton and joins the River Rother below the crooked spire. Both are main rivers, and on 20 October 2023, during Storm Babet, both set the highest levels ever recorded at most of their Chesterfield gauges. We prepare flood risk assessments in Chesterfield for planning applications, house purchases, mortgage lenders and insurers, alongside sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies.

On this page Chesterfield means the built-up area the Office for National Statistics maps: the town centre with Brampton, Boythorpe, Walton, Birdholme, Hasland, Spital, Tapton, Stonegravels, Newbold, Dunston, Whittington Moor, Sheepbridge and Old and New Whittington, mostly in the S40 and S41 postcode districts. Chesterfield Borough Council decides planning applications there, and Derbyshire County Council is the lead local flood authority.

In July 2026 the borough council and the Environment Agency concluded that the only lasting answer for Tapton Terrace, where a resident died when the Rother came into the houses in Storm Babet, is to buy and demolish the homes and stop the land being built on again.

To discuss an address in Chesterfield, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. Before quoting we look up the flood zone, the warning area and what the county's Storm Babet investigation recorded for that street. If you meant Chester in Cheshire, our Chester page covers the Dee.

Is Chesterfield in a flood zone? The Rother, the Hipper and three smaller streams

Parts of it are, and they are the low parts people live and work in. Flood Zones 2 and 3 follow the Rother north from Birdholme through the town centre to Tapton and Whittington, and the Hipper east from Walton through Brampton to Queen's Park. The Environment Agency maps the Rother, the Hipper and the River Whitting as main rivers; Holme Brook and Spital Brook are ordinary watercourses, which puts them under the county council.

Every one of these sits inside the Upper River Rother catchment flood alert, which also covers the Drone at Dronfield and the Rother down to Staveley, so an alert alone does not tell you which street is threatened. Our live river levels map shows the Chesterfield gauges and any warning in force side by side.

Looking up an S40 or S41 address

Type a Chesterfield postcode into the map to see the planning flood zones, where surface water is mapped and whether a warning is live, or open the full flood risk map. A result for Staveley, Brimington or Wingerworth still shows that address's own data, even though the coral line does not reach it.

What Storm Babet did to Chesterfield, street by street

More than 400 properties in Chesterfield were flooded inside between 18 and 21 October 2023, and one resident died, according to the county council investigation published in February 2025. Rain over the town centre had about a 1% chance of falling in any given year, and the report's chapter on the Don and Rother breaks the damage down by community:

Two details matter to anyone building or buying here. Homes on Camlough Walk and on the Chatsworth Road stretch had no recorded history of flooding, so a clean record did not mean a dry house. And the Hawthorne Street embankment, which the council's 2009 flood study rated to a 30-year standard and warned would be overtopped in severe floods, was overtopped. Our guide to Section 19 investigations explains what a report like Derbyshire's can and cannot settle.

Babet was not the first. Gauges on the Rother at Whittington and on Holme Brook at Ashgate still hold their records from 25 June 2007, and the Environment Agency's records show about half the central properties that flooded in 2023 had also flooded in November 2000 or June 2007.

What a flood risk assessment in Chesterfield is tested against

Chesterfield Borough Council judges an application against its 2020 Local Plan, a flood study from 2009 and national policy, with the county council commenting on drainage. Work has started on a replacement plan for 2025 to 2044, but until it is adopted the documents below are the ones that count.

The 2009 study sits beside the Agency's current Flood Map for Planning, and the Local Plan itself says proposals should use the best information available rather than the older maps. On a site by the Rother or the Hipper that usually means asking the Environment Agency for its model data. Our explainer on what an SFRA is for covers how the two fit together.

Washlands, walls and the stretches with no defence

Chesterfield's protection is patchy. South of the town the Rother spreads onto washland, while in the centre it runs between walls and banks that mostly belong to whoever owns the land beside them.

• Avenue Flood Balancing Reservoir. Finished in September 2018 about 1.7 km upstream of Hawthorne Street, it held back water during Babet and worked as designed, yet the streets below still flooded.
• Birdholme washland. The 2009 study describes a designated storage area from east of Birdholme Farm to St Augustine's School that floods often and has to keep doing so; land that floods that readily is normally treated as functional floodplain.
• Hawthorne Street. Two flood walls totalling 170 m and an embankment of the same length on the west bank, first built in the 1980s. The east bank has no engineered defence.
• Central Chesterfield. The Agency's asset records show no formal defence along the Rother or the Hipper here. High ground and private walls do the job, and after Babet the Agency wrote to owners at Ravenside Retail Park about collapsed banks, a missing flap valve and walls in poor repair.
• Tapton Terrace. The council's July 2026 statement says the Agency looked at defences and property-level measures and found neither would give lasting protection there.

If a riverside wall forms the boundary of your site, its upkeep may be yours: see our notes on riparian ownership and on defences below standard. Our Flood Zone 3b guide explains why washland like Birdholme is closed to almost all new building.

Building on the valley floor: Waterside, Chatsworth Road and brownfield sites

Much of Chesterfield's spare land is old industrial ground beside the rivers, and the Local Plan sends development there on purpose. That is why CLP13 sets terms for building on previously developed land outside Flood Zone 1 instead of ruling it out.

• Chesterfield Waterside. The corridor along the Rother and the canal north of the station had outline permission from 2011 for up to 1,550 homes, offices, hotels and a canal basin; the basin and the first homes were built by 2020.
• Chatsworth Road and Brampton. Retail units and terraced streets along the Hipper, where 55 businesses flooded in 2023; change of use or redevelopment here needs the vulnerability of the new use matched to the flood zone.
• Replacement and conversion. Rebuilding a house or converting a unit on Hawthorne Street, Spital Lane or Clayton Street brings the same questions about floor levels, access and where people go during a warning.
• Surface water and sewers. Yorkshire Water runs the public sewers named in the county's investigation, including the pumping station at the end of Hawthorne Street, which flooded and failed in 2023, and a network at Horns Bridge with a history of surcharging.

For drainage, Derbyshire County Council expects runoff kept to greenfield rates on new sites, and any culvert, outfall or other work on Holme Brook, Spital Brook or another ordinary watercourse needs its land drainage consent, even with planning permission granted. Our guide to main rivers and ordinary watercourses explains which body regulates which channel, and the BRE 365 calculator turns soakage test readings into a rate where the ground allows infiltration.

Reports for Chesterfield sites, from Brampton to Whittington Moor

An officer at the Town Hall, a lender, an insurer and Yorkshire Water each want something different from a Chesterfield site, so we match the report to the question.

• Applying to the borough council. A site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 by the Rother, the Hipper or the Whitting, a site of a hectare or more, or brownfield land being reused under CLP13 needs a flood risk assessment for planning built on the Agency's current model data rather than the 2009 maps.
• All sources together. A flood risk assessment for a Chesterfield plot looks at the rivers, Holme Brook and Spital Brook, surface water, the sewers and the ground, and sets out how the building and the people in it stay safe.
• Buying in Brampton or off Derby Road. Where a search flags a street that flooded in October 2023, a flood risk survey for property purchase looks at the house itself: its floor level, the route the water took and what an insurer is likely to ask.
• New homes on river land. Housing on an unallocated site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 needs a sequential and exception test report showing whether a lower-risk site in the borough could take it and, where the second test applies, what wider benefits justify the risk.
• Where the runoff goes. CLP13 asks major schemes for SuDS with a maintenance plan for their lifetime, and a drainage strategy sets out the rates, the storage and the outfall.
• Greenfield edges and old works sites. A green field must shed no more water once built on, and on a cleared works site the borough council seeks the largest cut in runoff it can get; a surface water drainage strategy calculates both and shows whether the sewer is needed at all.
• After the decision notice. Where a Chesterfield permission comes with a drainage condition, we prepare the calculations, drawings and maintenance plan for the discharge of drainage conditions.
• Homes that flooded in 2023. Owners on Hawthorne Street, Camlough Walk or in Brampton may need a flood risk assessment for insurance to show an underwriter the risk to the building and what has changed since.
• Shops and units by the Hipper. After 55 businesses flooded in Brampton and others at Ravenside Retail Park and Clayton Street, a business continuity flood risk assessment helps an occupier plan for the next warning.
• Industrial and retail land. Before buying or lending on a trading estate at Sheepbridge, Tapton or Birdholme, flood risk due diligence sets out the flood history, the warning area and what it means for the asset.
• Rivers with rising records. Most Chesterfield gauges set new highs in 2023, and where the Agency's model for a reach of the Rother or the Hipper is coarse or out of date, flood modelling settles the levels a scheme must work to.
• A ten-hour rise. The Hipper peaked about ten hours after it began to rise in 2023; for homes or businesses inside one of the town's warning areas, a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out who moves where once a warning is issued.
• Sites for the new Local Plan. With the council gathering sites for its 2025 to 2044 plan, a flood risk feasibility study tells a landowner early whether flood risk will block a site or only shape it.

Staveley, Brimington and the places beyond the outline

Staveley and Brimington lie outside the coral line because the ONS maps each as a built-up area of its own, though both fall in Chesterfield borough under the same Local Plan. Downstream at Staveley the Rother has its own warning area by the Clock Tower Business Centre, and the Staveley Works corridor, a large allocation in the plan, sits beside the river. Holymoorside, Wingerworth, Calow and Inkersall are outside too; Holymoorside, on the upper Hipper, had seven homes flooded inside in 2023.

For Derbyshire as a whole see our Derbyshire page. Downstream, the Rother crosses into South Yorkshire and is covered at Beighton on our Sheffield page; to the south-west, Matlock and Bakewell sit on the Derwent and the Wye. Every place we cover is listed in our areas index.

When water rises in Chesterfield: who handles what

Ring 999 if water is entering a building and anyone is in danger. After that, which body to call depends on where the water came from.

For any address, the long-term flood risk service on GOV.UK gives the chance of flooding from rivers, surface water and reservoirs.

Questions Chesterfield owners, buyers and applicants ask

For any other question about a Chesterfield site, call one of our experienced flood risk consultants on 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.