Flood Risk Assessment in Skegness

Skegness has flooded before, and it flooded badly. A flood risk assessment in Skegness has to start from that record rather than treat the town's flat, low-lying seafront as a blank slate. We prepare flood risk assessments in Skegness for planning applications, property purchase, mortgage and insurance cover, and BREEAM credits, alongside sequential and exception tests where a site's location needs justifying, and surface-water drainage strategies for the caravan parks, seafront schemes and housing still being built along this stretch of coast.

Call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk and one of our experienced flood risk consultants will come back to you within 60 minutes with a free, no-obligation quote.

On the night of 31 January 1953, the sea defences protecting Skegness were breached and floodwater reached the town's Clock Tower — the worst coastal flood England has recorded, and still the benchmark every flood risk assessment in Skegness is measured against today.

• Dominant risk. Tidal and coastal surge is the defining flood risk for Skegness, with surface water and groundwater relevant away from the seafront.
• Lead Local Flood Authority. Lincolnshire County Council manages surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses across the town.
• Local planning authority. East Lindsey District Council determines planning applications and holds the area's Strategic Flood Risk Assessment.
• Current defence standard. Skegness's sea walls, rock revetment and nourished beach are maintained to a 1-in-200-year standard of protection.

Check flood risk anywhere in Skegness

Enter a Skegness postcode below to see the Environment Agency's modelled flood risk for that exact location — rivers and the sea, surface water, reservoirs and the flood zone used for planning — plus any live flood warnings. East Lindsey, the district Skegness sits within, is outlined in coral. This is a screening tool, not a substitute for a site-specific flood risk assessment in Skegness.

The 1953 North Sea flood: Skegness's defining flood event

Any flood risk assessment in Skegness has to reckon with 31 January and 1 February 1953. That night, a deep Atlantic depression tracked around the north of Scotland and drove severe northwesterly gales down the North Sea, funnelling water into its shallow southern basin at the same time as a spring tide, in what meteorologists would later describe as the same kind of explosive deepening that still drives the worst North Sea surges today. Sea levels rose more than 5.6 metres above the mean in places, and along the English east coast alone, defences failed in around 1,200 locations.

What happened at Skegness and the surrounding coast

Flooding ran the length of coast from Mablethorpe to Skegness, reaching around two miles inland in places. Sea defences were breached at Mablethorpe, south of Sutton-on-Sea, and at Chapel St Leonards; at Ingoldmells Point a 500-yard gap opened in the sea wall and the Butlin's holiday camp there was left awash once its own defences collapsed. Skegness's Victorian sea wall, built in 1878, largely held its line, but water still forced its way past it and reached the town centre beyond the Clock Tower and the railway station.

• Lincolnshire's toll. Lincolnshire County Council and contemporaneous local reporting put the county-wide death toll at approximately 43, with local accounts recording around 41 lives lost along the Mablethorpe-to-Skegness stretch specifically, 17 of them at Ingoldmells; these figures vary slightly between sources and should be read as the best surviving local record rather than an exact official count.
• No lives lost in the town itself. Skegness flood warden Malcolm Gabbitas has recalled that, unlike neighbouring Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards, no lives were lost within Skegness town, even though the sea reached well past the Clock Tower.
• Thousands displaced. More than 5,000 people were made homeless along the Mablethorpe-to-Skegness coast, and boats were requisitioned from Skegness's own boating lakes to ferry stranded residents to safety before they were moved on to Alford and Louth.
• A national catastrophe. Across England the 1953 surge killed 307 people on land, with a further 224 to 230 lost at sea; in the Netherlands the same storm killed close to 1,800 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime disasters in twentieth-century Western Europe.

The Waverley Committee and what changed nationally

The government's response was the Waverley Committee, which reported to Parliament on 3 June 1954 and recommended that sea defences everywhere valuable land or housing was at stake should be built to withstand a repeat of the January 1953 flood, that river boards be allowed to raise more from the sea-defence levy, and that a coordinating authority be created for flood risk on the tidal Thames — a recommendation that eventually led to the Thames Barrier. An interim version of the report had already triggered an East Coast flood warning system in time for winter 1953 to 1954, and along the Lincolnshire coast itself, breaches were plugged using machinery and material brought in from across the country in the weeks that followed. The 70th anniversary in 2023 was marked locally with a free exhibition at the North Sea Observatory at Chapel Point and an outpouring of named survivor testimony in the local press, underlining how alive the memory of 1953 still is along this coast. The same storm reshaped a much wider stretch of the fenland behind Skegness, a story we cover in more depth in our look at flood risk management in the Fens, and it remains the reference point for how we assess rising sea levels along the East Coast today.

Flood risk in Skegness today: hydrology and flood zones

Tidal and coastal flooding remains the defining risk for Skegness, but it is not the only one a flood risk assessment in Skegness needs to cover. The Environment Agency's own flood risk service for Skegness confirms the town carries long-term risk from rivers, the sea, surface water and groundwater, and the EA maintains a dedicated flood warning area covering the sea defences at Skegness and the low-lying land near Gibraltar Point. National flood maps are a good starting point, but as we explain in are flood maps accurate?, they work at postcode scale rather than at the scale of a single building, which is exactly what a site-specific flood risk assessment in Skegness is for. Coastal towns like Skegness carry a particular version of that risk, covered in our explainer on tidal and sea flooding.

The Wainfleet breach is a useful reminder of how these sources interact: in June 2019, the River Steeping's Wainfleet Relief Channel gave way a few miles inland, flooding around 8 square kilometres and dozens of properties around Wainfleet St Mary, with evacuated residents sheltered in Skegness itself. It shows why a flood risk assessment in Skegness has to look beyond the seafront to the wider catchment feeding Gibraltar Point. For a first check on any specific address, our free flood risk map and live river levels map give an indicative reading in seconds, and our geology and ground conditions checker is a useful first step where soakaway drainage is being considered. Where a site needs a closer look at groundwater or hydraulic behaviour, that sits within a groundwater flood risk assessment or dedicated flood modelling, both of which we can build directly into the wider report.

From 1953 to today: how Skegness's flood defences have changed

The clearest measure of how far Skegness's defences have come sits in December 2013. The Environment Agency has described that storm surge as the largest by tide-gauge height since 1953, yet nationally it flooded around 2,800 properties against 24,000 in 1953, and caused no deaths at all. At Skegness itself, roughly 90 metres of floodwall failed between the pier and the lifeboat station and water reached towards the Clock Tower once again; at Gibraltar Point the "Bulldog Bank" defence breached and flooded the visitor centre, leaving three residents homeless. Across Lincolnshire as a whole, 607 homes and 121 businesses flooded, at a cost of some £8.1 million to infrastructure, with 203 people assisted from their homes and 44 rescued — serious, but a fraction of 1953's toll.

Modern Lincolnshire defences turned a surge that, by peak water level, exceeded 1953 into an incident with zero deaths — the clearest proof that continued investment in the Skegness frontage is not a formality but the reason the town still stands where it does.

That investment is ongoing rather than historic. The Lincshore beach nourishment scheme has added roughly 550,000 cubic metres of sand to the Mablethorpe-to-Skegness frontage every year since 1994, and a further £7 million campaign in 2024 placed around 400,000 cubic metres at Ingoldmells and Wolla Bank. The Environment Agency's Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point strategy, sitting within the statutory Flamborough Head to Gibraltar Point Shoreline Management Plan, sets the long-term approach for the whole frontage, and a £151 million Flood Risk Resilience Fund announced in 2024 ties the defence of 13.8 kilometres of coastline to the new Skegness Gateway development, with the Environment Agency estimating the cost of managing this stretch at £15 million to £40 million per kilometre over the next century. That figure sits inside a wider, well-documented funding gap across England's coastal and river defences, which we cover in our review of the National Audit Office's findings. None of this removes the risk; it manages it, which is precisely why an up-to-date flood risk assessment in Skegness still needs to test a site against present-day defences and how they are expected to perform as sea levels rise. Lincolnshire has also begun trialling changes to how residents are warned, covered in our piece on the county's new flood warning approach.

Planning and drainage policy for flood risk assessment in Skegness

Lincolnshire County Council is the Lead Local Flood Authority for Skegness, responsible for surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses, while East Lindsey District Council is the local planning authority that determines applications and holds the area's evidence base. The district's Strategic Flood Risk Assessment, adopted in March 2017, sets out a Level 1 district-wide baseline plus a Level 2 assessment covering the full Lincolnshire coastline, and East Lindsey's adopted Core Strategy carries a locally defined Coastal Zone designation on its policies map, reflecting how much of the district's development pressure sits close to the sea. Every assessment we prepare is checked against the National Planning Policy Framework's flood risk guidance as well as this local evidence base. Ordinary watercourses through the town, including the Winthorpe Drain, are maintained by the Lindsey Marsh Drainage Board, and the Anglian (Northern) Regional Flood and Coastal Committee oversees flood and coastal defence investment across this part of the coast.

• Flood Zone 2 or 3. A flood risk assessment in Skegness is required for virtually any development in these zones, which cover much of the seafront — see our guide to what Flood Zones 1, 2 and 3 actually mean.
• One hectare or more. Sites of this size need an assessment even where they fall in Flood Zone 1.
• Surface water risk. Increasingly, smaller Flood Zone 1 sites flagged on the Flood Map for Planning for surface water also trigger the requirement.
• A sequential or exception test. Where a scheme cannot avoid a higher-risk part of the site, the sequential and exception test asks whether the development should be there at all, a different question from whether the site itself can be made safe.
• A drainage strategy. Developments of ten or more dwellings, a hectare or more, or smaller schemes in flood-risk or critical-drainage areas, generally need a surface-water drainage strategy setting out where the water goes.

Development and flood risk assessment in Skegness

What gets built in Skegness shapes the assessment it needs. Ingoldmells and the surrounding coast are widely described as one of the largest concentrations of static caravan and holiday parks in the country, and a 2011 report commissioned by East Lindsey District Council counted more than 200 sites and around 25,000 static caravans along this stretch of coast. Because static caravans and lodges are treated as a highly vulnerable use for flood risk purposes, new or expanded holiday parks in Flood Zone 2 or 3 need an assessment that looks hard at safe evacuation routes and warning time, not just at the buildings themselves — recent approvals for several hundred additional holiday lodge and caravan bases next to the Butlin's resort show this pressure has not slowed.

Skegness is also being reshaped by town centre and housing investment. The £48.4 million "Connected Coast" Town Deal, of which £24.5 million is earmarked for Skegness specifically, has already funded a new learning campus and town-centre and station works, and a further £5 million scheme is under way to redevelop Skegness Pier, the Embassy Theatre and the surrounding foreshore. The largest single change is Skegness Gateway, a 336-acre extension of up to 1,000 homes given a Local Development Order in 2025 — flood mitigation for the wider frontage was a precondition of unlocking the site, which is why its £151 million resilience funding and the housing scheme are so closely tied together. Each of these projects needs its own flood risk assessment in Skegness, scoped to what it actually is: a seafront tourism scheme, a town-centre regeneration project, or a housing extension.

Skegness sits within a wider stretch of coast where similar pressures repeat with local variations. We cover the county's rivers, Fens and North Sea coast more broadly in our flood risk assessment in Lincolnshire page, and further up the Humber estuary the same tidal dynamics shape our work in Grimsby, while the fenland tides and drainage of the Wash lead to a different kind of assessment in Wisbech.

How Unda helps with flood risk assessment in Skegness

We act as the accurate translation layer between your scheme and the requirements set by the Environment Agency, Lincolnshire County Council as LLFA, East Lindsey District Council as the planning authority, and national planning policy. Our wider flood risk consultancy services cover the same ground across England, but we are experts on this coast's flooding specifically, not a generic report mill working from a national dataset alone.

Flood risk assessments and related reports for every situation in Skegness

A flood risk assessment, a sequential or exception test and a drainage strategy are three distinct reports. They often travel together in a Skegness planning submission, but they answer different questions: whether the site is safe, whether the development should be there at all, and where the surface water goes. We prepare all three, alongside reports built for audiences beyond planning.

• Flood risk assessment for planning. The core report submitted with a planning application to satisfy the National Planning Policy Framework and East Lindsey's own evidence base.
• Flood risk assessment for insurance. For brokers and underwriters where premiums have risen or cover has been declined or restricted following a flood event.
• Flood risk assessment for property purchase. For homebuyers and lenders where a conveyancing search has flagged risk on a Skegness property.
• Flood risk assessment for BREEAM. Structured around BREEAM's flood and surface water management credit, a different, credit-driven framework from a planning submission.
• Surface-water drainage strategy. Sets out how runoff from a Skegness site is managed and discharged within the limits the LLFA requires.
• Discharge of drainage conditions and preliminary drainage design. The detailed and early-stage drainage work that follows a strategy through to construction.
• Groundwater assessment and flood modelling. Built into the wider flood risk assessment where a site's geology or its position by the River Steeping needs closer technical analysis.

For general background on how these reports fit together, our guides on when a flood risk assessment is required and what the sequential and exception tests involve cover the England-wide rules that apply just as much on the Lincolnshire coast. Buyers, owners and lenders with an interest in Skegness property may also find our pieces on whether flood risk affects house prices, flood risk and mortgage lending, and how the Flood Re insurance scheme works useful background before commissioning a report. Our drainage calculators and BRE 365 infiltration rate calculator are useful first steps once a scheme is ready to size its drainage.

Local flood risk management and emergency contacts in Skegness

Alongside the reports we prepare, it helps to know who actually manages flood risk in Skegness day to day and how to reach them if water is already rising.

Everyone living or working near the Skegness seafront can sign up for free Environment Agency flood warnings for the sea defences and Gibraltar Point warning areas, which typically give more notice than the few hours available in 1953. Our own live river levels map is a useful companion for the River Steeping catchment feeding into the same stretch of coast, and our guide on preparing for a flood and protecting your home sets out practical steps for anyone in a warning area.

Frequently asked questions about flood risk assessment in Skegness