Flood Risk Assessment in Loughborough

A flood risk assessment in Loughborough, Leicestershire, has to account for two kinds of water that reach the town from opposite sides. Wood Brook, Burleigh Brook and Black Brook come down from the higher, Charnwood Forest side of town and pass through its streets, the Wood Brook partly in a culvert beneath the town centre, while the River Soar spreads across the flat meadows to the east and can find its way in along the Grand Union Canal. Our consultants write flood risk assessments in Loughborough for planning, for buyers, and for lenders and insurers, and prepare sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies.

Here Loughborough means the built-up town as the Office for National Statistics maps it: the centre and Queen's Park, Shelthorpe and Southfields to the south, Nanpantan and the university campus to the south-west, Thorpe Acre, Knightthorpe and Garendon Park to the west, and Dishley and the Belton Road industrial area to the north, most of it in the LE11 postcode district. Charnwood Borough Council decides planning applications, and Leicestershire County Council is the lead local flood authority. Shepshed, Hathern, Quorn and Cotes sit outside the outline and are covered further down.

Storm Henk flooded 140 Loughborough properties internally on 2 and 3 January 2024, more than 120 of them in the north-east of the town, where the Soar, having overtopped Pillings Lock upstream, came in along the canal. A year later, on 6 January 2025, the Wood Brook gauge set a new record of 1.21 m.

To talk through a Loughborough site, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. We read the address against the brook warning areas and the county council's flood investigations before we quote.

Wood Brook warnings, the Soar meadows and the canal: where Loughborough floods

Four Environment Agency flood warning areas and one wider flood alert cover the town. Three of the warnings name the brooks, one of them jointly with the Soar, and the fourth covers the Soar's farmland at Cotes and Loughborough Moors.

Charnwood Borough Council's Loughborough flood page puts the Wood Brook's capacity through the town at roughly a 1 in 25 to 1 in 30 year flow, with no raised defences, so higher flows spill out locally. A debris screen went in at Holt Drive in April 2016, followed by a remote camera that September. Both brook and river levels can be followed on our live river levels map when an alert is issued.

Search an LE11 postcode on the map

Type a postcode below to see the planning flood zones, the surface water extents and any warning live at that point, or open our flood risk map for a site anywhere in England. The coral outline marks the ONS built-up area of Loughborough, from Nanpantan and the university in the south-west to the Soar meadows in the east.

Loughborough is one of the Environment Agency's nationally significant Flood Risk Areas twice over, once for rivers and once for surface water, in the Humber river basin district. Charnwood's Level 1 SFRA of December 2018 and Level 2 SFRA of January 2021 add modelling of the town's tributaries, and found that with climate change the river flood extents grow beyond today's Flood Zone 3, close to the present Flood Zone 2.

Seven main rivers inside one town

The borough council lists the main rivers in Loughborough, the channels the Environment Agency regulates, and there are seven: the Soar itself and six brooks. The council also notes that Loughborough lies outside any internal drainage board district.

• Wood Brook. Drains the Charnwood Forest side of town, where Nanpantan Reservoir sits in its catchment, passes Holt Drive and then runs partly in culvert through the town centre, under the Market Street site and beside Devonshire Square.
• Burleigh Brook. Flows past Epinal Way, where in Storm Henk its high water stopped the road's drains emptying into it.
• Black Brook. Runs past Thorpe Acre from the Shepshed direction; only its downstream reaches are main river. The brook is also a Local Wildlife Site.
• Grammar School Brook and Hermitage Brook. Smaller streams that reach the Soar floodplain around Moor Lane, where they and the river flooded together in January 2024.
• Willow Brook. Main river in its downstream reaches only.
• The River Soar and the Grand Union Canal. The Soar crosses the open meadows on the eastern edge. The canal runs nearer the houses, and in 2024 it carried the river's water into the north-east of the town.

Where a stream is not main river, as on the upper Black Brook and Willow Brook, it is an ordinary watercourse, and Leicestershire County Council consents to culverts and outfalls on it instead of the Agency. Our guide to main rivers and ordinary watercourses explains why that split matters for a new outfall or a bridge.

Storm Henk: five separate flood areas across Loughborough

The county council's Section 19 investigation for Loughborough is the most detailed account of how the town floods. It counts 140 properties flooded internally and at least 30 more flooded outside, and it traces each part of the town to a different source:

Two findings matter for anyone building near the canal. The Soar's flow at Pillings Lock, an estimated 194 cubic metres a second on the morning of 3 January, beat the record set at Easter 1998, and the river bypassed and then overtopped the lock into the canal. The Moor Lane flood gates on the canal were judged inoperable afterwards, with no plan to repair them; instead the Canal & River Trust and the Agency formalised a drawdown protocol, used five times in the winter of 2025 to 2026.

Loughborough's flood record, from Cothelstone Avenue to January 2025

1. 28 June 2012. A short, intense storm on saturated ground sent water off the park and along Cothelstone Avenue in Thorpe Acre, flooding two houses about 250 mm deep. The county's report found the surface water sewer outfall submerged by a high Black Brook.
2. 16 February 2020, Storm Dennis. Heavy rain on an already wet catchment took the Wood Brook over its banks at Holt Drive, and teams cleared the debris screens through the night. The gauge reached 1.095 m, a record at the time.
3. 2 and 3 January 2024, Storm Henk. The Wood Brook gauge peaked at 1.049 m in the late afternoon of 2 January, and the Soar at Pillings Lock reached 2.50 m the next morning. Leicestershire County Council counted about 500 properties flooded across the county.
4. 6 and 7 January 2025. Another countywide flood brought widespread internal flooding to Loughborough again, now under separate investigation. The Wood Brook gauge reached its 1.21 m record on 6 January and Pillings Lock its 2.52 m record the next day.
5. The same week. On the Grange Park estate on the town's southern edge, residents dug trenches along Alan Turing Road to steer water away from homes after, they said, a nearby attenuation pond overflowed; the developer and the borough council each told the BBC that someone else was responsible.

Because the 2025 flood set new records at both gauges only a year after Henk, its report may change the levels an assessment works to. Until it is published, a Loughborough assessment reads the gauge records and the Henk findings side by side.

What a flood risk assessment in Loughborough must show under Policies CC1 and CC2

Charnwood adopted its new Local Plan on 19 January 2026, and two of its policies decide most flood questions in Loughborough. The surface water trigger in CC1 is broader than the national one, and the town centre allocations come with the exception test written into their policies.

Our explainers on the 2025 National Standards for SuDS and on why an LLFA objects to a drainage strategy cover what the county council checks in a drainage submission and why one gets sent back.

Garendon Park, the southern fringe and the sites over the culvert

The plan records that the flat, wide floodplain has held Loughborough back on its eastern side. Most new housing is going on sloping land to the west and south, crossed by Wood Brook tributaries, while the town centre sites sit beside or over the Wood Brook itself.

For the town below these sites, the Environment Agency's Wood Brook scheme has outline approval at about £11 million and is programmed for December 2028, subject to change. Its main element would turn Severn Trent's Nanpantan Reservoir into flood storage, with natural flood management upstream. The investigation is clear that it will not cover the whole town, and the borough council's page, last updated in January 2024, describes the Agency's wider review of risk to about 1,000 homes from the Wood Brook, Burleigh Brook and the canal.

Cellars on Gladstone Street, drains under water and balancing ponds

Henk also showed three ways water reached property without coming over a bank: groundwater rising into cellars on Gladstone Street, highway and sewer outfalls drowned by a full river or canal so that rain had nowhere to go, and surface water trapped on Epinal Way. Severn Trent Water runs the public sewers, and Cothelstone Avenue in 2012 showed the same pattern on a smaller scale, with a sewer outfall submerged by a high Black Brook.

For a drainage strategy, that means checking the outfall level against brook and canal levels as well as the pipe capacity. Infiltration depends on the ground, which our soakaway and ground conditions checker can screen before any testing. Grange Park also shows why ownership and maintenance of SuDS features have to be settled at the condition stage, a point our article on sewer flooding covers from the buyer's side.

Reports for Loughborough sites, from Nanpantan to the Belton Road estates

Each report is scoped to the address and what it is for: which brook or reach of the Soar it sits beside, how far the canal and the drains matter there, and what the borough council, a lender or an insurer has asked to see.

• Planning applications to Charnwood. Development in Flood Zone 2 or 3, a major scheme, or any site on a mapped surface water route needs a flood risk assessment for planning written to Policy CC1 and the borough's SFRA.
• One site, several sources. A flood risk assessment for a Loughborough address can need the Soar, a brook in culvert, the canal, groundwater and drowned outfalls all considered together, as Henk showed.
• Buying in the brook warning areas. Before exchange on a house off Forest Road, by Warwick Way or near Meadow Avenue, a flood risk survey for property purchase checks the building against the gauges and the county's flood investigations.
• Homes on unallocated flood zone land. New dwellings in Flood Zone 2 or 3 outside the plan's allocations, near the Soar meadows or the Wood Brook, need a sequential and exception test report alongside the assessment.
• Where the rain goes. A drainage strategy sets out how a Loughborough site meets CC2 and the county council's checklist, with the outfall level checked against the brook.
• Runoff from the western slopes. Allocations such as Laburnum Way and Moat Farm include Wood Brook tributaries, so a surface water drainage strategy has to hold flows back and show the storage working.
• After permission. Grange Park showed what follows when nobody is clear who looks after a balancing pond; our discharge of drainage conditions work settles maintenance and adoption before the condition is cleared.
• Levels the national maps do not give. On the Wood Brook through the town centre or beside the canal, where flows depend on the culvert and the Soar together, flood modelling supplies site levels.
• Getting out before the water arrives. Homes and businesses inside the Wood Brook or Black Brook warning areas may need a flood warning and evacuation plan that keys actions to the Loughborough gauge.
• Buying commercial premises. At least ten town centre businesses flooded in Henk and the Belton Road premises were named as most at risk in January 2025, so a due diligence flood risk assessment helps an investor or lender judge an industrial unit or shop.
• Cover after a claim. Loughborough households flooded in January 2024 and again in January 2025; an insurance flood risk assessment gives a broker or underwriter evidence about the building itself.

Shepshed, Hathern, Quorn and the villages outside the outline

Shepshed is a separate town upstream on the Black Brook, with its own gauge, and Hathern lies to the north, where Soar warning areas reach from Zouch towards the village. Quorn, south along the A6, was one of the places Henk hit hardest. We prepare reports there too, under the same Charnwood policies, and our Leicestershire page covers the county as a whole, while Leicester has its own page as a separate planning and flood authority.

Loughborough University also researches flooding: its work on real-time surface water forecasting appears near the top of a search for the town, and our article on the university's sediment pond study looks at what small farm ponds can and cannot do. Every area page is listed on our areas index.

Brook, river, canal or drain: who deals with each in Loughborough

Responsibility in Loughborough is split by the source of the water, which is why a single street can need three organisations after one storm. Where water puts anyone at risk, ring 999 before anything else.

Flood risk assessment in Loughborough: questions about fees, records and the brook scheme

Whether the site is a terrace in Shelthorpe, a plot at Nanpantan or a unit off Belton Road, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. Unda Consulting Limited is one of CIWEM's Business Partners. Our chartered consultants can say early on which reports a Charnwood application will need, and a senior consultant checks and signs every report.