Flood Risk Assessment in Exmouth

A flood risk assessment in Exmouth, East Devon, is mostly about the sea. The tidal Exe runs along the west side of the town and the open sea along the Esplanade and Queen's Drive, while Withycombe Brook comes down through Withycombe Raleigh and Phear Park to an outfall on the estuary. Since 2022 a £12 million line of walls, embankments and flood gates has stood between the low-lying streets and the tide, yet the planning maps still show those streets in the flood zone. Our consultants write flood risk assessments for Exmouth sites going to planning, to purchase, to a lender or to an insurer, as well as sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies.

On this page Exmouth means the built-up town as the Office for National Statistics outlines it. That takes in the docks and marina, the town centre and Camperdown, the seafront and the Maer, Withycombe Raleigh, Brixington, Littleham and Halsdon, all in the EX8 postcode district. East Devon District Council decides planning applications here, and Devon County Council, as lead local flood authority, reviews the drainage on major schemes.

The Environment Agency's 2022 scheme cut the yearly chance of a tidal flood from 4% to 0.5% for more than 1,400 Exmouth homes and 400 businesses. It relies on 28 flood gates being shut before a high tide, and in an extreme storm the Esplanade is left to flood.

Call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk with an Exmouth address. Before quoting we check it against the tidal warning area, the line of the defences and gates, the Withycombe Brook floodplain and the town's surface water records.

Is Exmouth in a flood zone behind its new tidal defences?

Parts of it are, and the defences do not take them out. Unda's own overlay of the Environment Agency's Flood Map for Planning data (October 2026) puts about 8.5% of the outlined town in Flood Zone 2 or 3. About 7% is in Flood Zone 3, most of it from the sea or from the sea and the brook together. The Flood Map for Planning draws those zones as if the walls were not there, so a site behind them is still treated as Flood Zone 3 when a planning application is assessed.

Three Environment Agency gauges track the town's water: the Exmouth tide gauge, whose highest reading is 3.11 m, the Withycombe Brook gauge at Phear Park, and the estuary gauge at Lympstone. The low-lying streets sit in the South Devon coast at Exmouth flood warning area, and the wider Rivers Otter and Sid, and Exmouth area flood alert also takes in the town. All of them can be followed on our live river levels map.

Look up an EX8 address on the map

Enter an Exmouth postcode to see the planning flood zones, surface water extents and any live warning for that spot, or use our flood risk map for a site anywhere in England. The coral line follows the ONS built-up area, from the docks round to Brixington in the north and Littleham in the east.

The district's evidence base was renewed in 2024: a Level 1 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment by JBA Consulting in February and a Level 2 study finalised that October, both summarised in the council's flood risk topic paper. The topic paper names Exmouth as one of the four East Devon towns most at risk from the sea, where tidal flooding along the Exe can combine with river and surface water flooding. It also lists the town among places with recorded sewer flooding. The one Exmouth site taken to Level 2, the town centre police station, has no tidal or river risk, but in a 1 in 1,000 year storm surface water flows across it and west onto Clarence Road.

Twenty-eight flood gates from the Withycombe Brook outfall to the clock tower

The Exmouth tidal defence scheme was planned by the Environment Agency and East Devon District Council from 2015, funded in 2017 and completed in October 2022. It raised the standard of protection from a 1 in 25 year tide to a 1 in 200 year tide, allowing for sea level rise. The walls are designed to be raised again later, and the Environment Agency expects no further tidal work before 2045.

• Royal Avenue. An earth embankment and then concrete walls run along the estuary side from the Withycombe Brook outfall to the Imperial Recreation Ground.
• Camperdown Creek. An embankment, a timber-clad sheet-piled wall, rebuilt rock gabions and a gate at the Camperdown Terrace slipway carry the line on to Camperdown Terrace. A separate project was to fit more than thirty flood doors to homes there and around Mamhead Slipway.
• The Esplanade. From the Grove to just past the clock tower the toe of the sea wall was strengthened and new walls set back behind the road. In an extreme storm the Esplanade itself floods while the gates keep the water out of the streets behind, and new drainage returns it to the sea.
• The gates. Twenty-six gates joined the two already at Mamhead Slipway. The Environment Agency gives the trigger, normally six hours before a high tide; East Devon District Council shuts the heavy road gates and town council volunteers shut the lighter ones.

For anyone building or buying behind that line, the live question is what happens if a storm overtops the walls or a gate is left open. A flood risk assessment in Exmouth has to answer that residual risk, with floor levels and a way out that still work in a 1 in 200 year tide plus climate change. Our articles on living in a flood zone after new defences are built and on residual flood risk explain how the two are weighed.

A seafront that depends on its beach

East of the gates the town relies on a sea wall and the sand in front of it. When the beach drops, the wall loses its footing. Storm Babet left the sand below the foundations in October 2023, a 90 m length of wall tipped forward and cracked, and the council forecast £1.1 million for a steel sheet-pile repair (East Devon District Council, November 2023). After the storms of January 2026 the council's engineer reported the beach a metre lower beside the old lifeboat station slipway, according to the town council's flooding working party.

The policies come from the Durlston Head to Rame Head shoreline management plan. How the town holds that line over the next century is set by the Exmouth Beach Management Plan, first adopted in 2015. Its update, consulted on in the winter of 2024 to 2025 for the frontage from Orcombe Point to the marina, has since been adopted by the district council's cabinet. It puts the damage from flooding, erosion and loss of the beach at around £800 million if nothing is done, and keeps three pathways open: encasing the sea wall behind a set-back flood wall, new groynes with beach nourishment, or continued repairs. Our guides to shoreline management plans and to sea walls, groynes and beach nourishment explain the options.

Exmouth's recent flood record, street by street

Since the tidal scheme was built, Exmouth's dated record has been storms on the seafront and water the drains and sewers could not clear. None of the records found describes the tide coming over the new defences.

1. By October 2020. The town council's flooding working party logged a garage at the St Andrews Road and Imperial Road junction flooding so often that the business had to close, with a drain nearby that clogged repeatedly.
2. 27 August 2020. Withycombe Brook reached 1.26 m at Phear Park, still the highest reading at the gauge.
3. 2021. Rain filled Victoria Road near Imperial Road to the tops of the kerbs along six houses. High tides flooded the Hartopp Road and Halsdon Road junction, and water ponded repeatedly on the Esplanade and Queen's Drive by the clock tower.
4. 12 to 14 January 2023. Devon County Council's River Exe floods report recorded external flooding by homes on Victoria Road, Exmouth, and flooding on the A376 near Lympstone.
5. October 2023, Storm Babet. The beach fell below the sea wall's foundations and a 90 m length of wall failed; a sand and geotextile barrier was built before Storm Ciarán arrived.
6. Autumn 2025. Water was filmed pouring from manholes on Exeter Road near the Hartopp pumping station at high tide.
7. 9 December 2025, Storm Bram. One Exmouth property flooded inside from surface water, out of 18 across Devon in the county's Storm Bram investigation.
8. January 2026. South West Water confirmed the Maer was still flooding after each storm while its pumping there was held at about 200 litres a second, pending an Environment Agency permit for 700.

Devon County Council's list of flood investigations includes none centred on Exmouth, so the town council's working party notes, the county's Devon-wide reports and the gauge records are the evidence a flood risk assessment in Exmouth draws on.

What does a flood risk assessment in Exmouth need to show under East Devon's policies?

It has to show the site is safe for its lifetime without raising flood risk elsewhere, judged against the adopted East Devon Local Plan 2013 to 2031 and chapter 18 of the national planning policy framework on flooding and coastal change. One is needed for new building in Flood Zone 2 or 3, for a site of a hectare or more in Flood Zone 1, and for a change to a more vulnerable use on land at risk from other sources. Drainage on major schemes goes to Devon County Council.

Exmouth is not one of Devon's critical drainage areas, so the county's tighter rule for small schemes there does not apply, as our note on critical drainage areas explains. Windfall homes in Flood Zone 2 or 3 near the docks or Camperdown still face the sequential test, even behind the new walls; our note on the September 2025 guidance change covers how the test is now applied.

Goodmores Farm, the town centre sites and the sewers under the Maer

The allocated sites lie away from the estuary and the seafront, and Goodmores Farm and Liverton Business Park are both in Flood Zone 1, so for the larger schemes the question is usually drainage, not the tide.

• Allocated land. The adopted plan allocates 350 homes and about 5 hectares of employment and community land at Goodmores Farm, with smaller employment allocations at Liverton Business Park and south of Redgate. The draft plan would allocate about 1,455 homes in the town across ten sites.
• The Maer and Hartopp. South West Water is planning an upgrade of the Maer Lane treatment works to a 2050 horizon. Until the Environment Agency permits the Maer Road pumping station to run at about 700 litres a second, flooding on the Maer continues; manholes by the Hartopp pumping station have also overflowed at high tide.
• The Colony streets. Devon County Council's surface water improvements there wait on South West Water, because the water has to be pumped out past the coastal defences. The company told the town council in January 2026 that major work on Exmouth's sewer catchment is unlikely before 2030.

Where sewers already struggle, a drainage strategy that keeps runoff at greenfield rates matters more than usual, as our pages on sewer flooding and the national standards for sustainable drainage set out. Infiltration has to be proven by testing before soakaways are relied on, and our ground conditions and soakaway checker gives a first indication for a site.

Flood and drainage reports for Exmouth sites, from the docks to Littleham

Exmouth work ranges from a single cottage in Camperdown Terrace to an employment plot at Liverton Business Park, and each calls for a different report.

• Planning applications to East Devon District Council. New homes, extensions beyond standing advice or a change of use in Flood Zone 2 or 3 near the estuary or seafront need a flood risk assessment for planning written to Policy EN21 and the residual risk behind the gates.
• Every source on one plot. A flood risk assessment for an EX8 address weighs the tide, waves on the seafront, Withycombe Brook, the smaller brooks, surface water and the sewers together, because the town has flooded from each of them.
• Buying a home near the docks or the Maer. Before exchange on a house in Camperdown Terrace, Victoria Road or the streets behind the Esplanade, a flood risk survey for property purchase reads the building against the warning area, the defence line and the gates.
• Windfall housing near the docks. New homes on unallocated land in Flood Zone 3 around Camperdown Creek have to pass the sequential and exception test before the council can approve them.
• Drainage for the planning stage. Our drainage strategy work shows East Devon and Devon County Council where a scheme's water will go when the Maer and Hartopp sewers are already under strain.
• Sites on the higher ground. Larger plots at Goodmores Farm, Brixington and Liverton Business Park need a surface water drainage strategy holding runoff to greenfield rates under Policy EN22 and the Devon SuDS guidance, because the town's brooks and sewers already struggle in storms.
• Conditions on permissions. When East Devon attaches a pre-commencement drainage condition, our discharge of drainage conditions service prepares what Devon County Council needs to clear it.
• Plans for the warning and the gates. Hotels, flats and holiday lets in the South Devon coast at Exmouth warning area often need a flood warning and evacuation plan built round the six-hour gate trigger.
• Seafront and dockside businesses. Buyers and lenders on Esplanade, marina and dockside premises commission commercial due diligence that covers the defences, the beach management plan and wave exposure.
• Cover behind the defences. Owners on Victoria Road and in Camperdown, where the flood map still shows Flood Zone 3, use a flood report for insurers to set out what the 2022 scheme changed.
• The brook meets the tide. Where Withycombe Brook reaches its tidal outfall by Royal Avenue, flood modelling can test brook and tide levels together when national mapping is too coarse.

Lympstone, Sandy Bay and the places beyond the outline

Lympstone, up the estuary, is a separate built-up area with its own tidal warning area for the Strand, Quay Lane and Chapel Lane. Exton lies further north, and Sandy Bay and Orcombe Point sit just outside the outline to the east. Sites in those places are covered from our Devon page, which also sets out who decides applications across the county.

Across the water, Dawlish faces the same coast from the other side of the estuary mouth, and the city of Exeter lies at the head of the tidal reach. The river as a whole, from Exmoor down to Exmouth, has its own page on the River Exe, and every town we cover is listed in our areas index.

Tide, brook, drain or sewer: who to call in Exmouth

Responsibility in Exmouth is split by source, and the gates add a body of their own.

Flood risk assessment in Exmouth: questions from buyers and builders

To talk through an Exmouth site, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. Unda Consulting Limited is a CIWEM Business Partner, our consultants are chartered, and a senior consultant reviews every report before it is issued.