Flood Risk Assessment in Totnes

A flood risk assessment in Totnes has to deal with two kinds of water arriving at once. The River Dart comes down off Dartmoor and turns tidal at the weir just above the town, and on a big tide the estuary backs up into the lowest streets. When heavy rain falls at the same time, the drains under Warland and The Plains cannot empty into the river. The water has nowhere to go but the street. Our work in the town covers flood risk assessments in Totnes for a planning application, a purchase, a mortgage or an insurer, along with sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies.

Totnes here means the town as the Office for National Statistics maps it: the old town climbing from The Plains to the castle, Warland and the Broadmarsh industrial estate on the flat ground by the river, and Bridgetown on the east bank down to Steamer Quay. It is all in South Hams district and the TQ9 postcode district.

On 9 December 2025, during Storm Bram, nine properties on and around Warland flooded inside. The river did not overtop the defences: the Dart stood so high on the tide that the surface water outfalls could not drain.

For a site in Totnes or Bridgetown, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk with the address and a line about the plans, and one of our consultants will tell you which reports the site needs.

Is Totnes in a flood zone? An eighth of the town, where river and tide overlap

Partly. Our own overlay of the Environment Agency's Flood Map for Planning on the town's outline, run on 30 October 2026, puts about 12% of the built-up area in Flood Zone 3 and about 16% in Zones 2 or 3 combined. Almost all of that Zone 3 land is mapped as at risk from river and sea together, not from one or the other. The rest of the town rises steeply away from the Dart, and there the questions are about runoff.

Zones 1, 2 and 3 are explained in our guide to flood zones in England. The zone is a poor guide on its own here. The worst recent flooding in Totnes came from drains that could not discharge, on streets behind the river defences.

Look up a TQ9 street before you build or buy

Enter a Totnes or Bridgetown postcode in the map below to see river and sea, surface water and reservoir flood extents around it, or open our full flood risk map for any address in England. The coral line marks the town as the ONS draws it. The map cannot show whether an outfall is tide-locked, how a 2018 wall performs on the night, or what South West Water's sewers will accept, and on a Totnes site those often decide the answer.

Storm Bram and the outfalls that could not drain

Devon County Council published its investigation into Storm Bram on 30 October 2026, and Totnes accounts for half the properties in it. Of the 18 homes and businesses flooded inside across Devon on 9 December 2025, nine were in Totnes, all on Warland and the streets beside it. The council's report found:

• The cause. The report names tidal locking of the surface water outfalls as the principal cause. The Dart was high enough to stop the outfalls discharging by gravity, so rainwater backed up into the streets.
• Not the river. There was no widespread overtopping of the Dart itself, and the council found no evidence that blocked gullies alone were to blame.
• Tide and depth. Tides of about 3.54 m were predicted for 08:54 and 3.06 m for 21:50 that day. Water stood up to about 20 cm deep, and bow waves from passing vehicles pushed it over some households' flood boards.
• Not the first time. The same report lists twelve properties on Warland flooded by surface water in December 2002, three in June 2005, and two on Warland and one in Collapark in January 2016.
• What comes next. The county council has commissioned a feasibility study into options for reducing surface water flood risk in Totnes, and its highways team is to review the gullies.

For anyone building on low ground in the town, Bram is the event to design around: a rainstorm on a high tide floods streets the river walls protect. An assessment has to show where water collects when the outfalls shut and where it goes instead. Our explainers on surface water flooding and planning and tidal flooding set out the background.

Fifty years of floods and the 2018 walls

The Environment Agency's records and its own account of the town's defences give a dated outline of how Totnes has flooded and what has been built in response:

1. February 1974. A recorded river flood outline covers ground near The Plains, where the Dart overflowed its channel with no raised defences in the way.
2. 1980 and December 1981. The first flood defence scheme was built in 1980. In December 1981 the river overtopped defences near Steamer Quay, according to the Agency's recorded outline.
3. October 2004. Two recorded outlines, from 24 and 27 October, show the tide overtopping defences by the river below the town bridge.
4. 10 March 2008. The Totnes tide gauge reached 3.26 m, still its highest reading. The Agency says property flooding is possible above 3.25 m.
5. October 2012. Malt Mill Lake, a small stream on the western side of the town, overflowed its channel, the Agency's records show.
6. 2017 to 2018. South Hams gave permission in 2017 for a £3.8 million scheme to protect more than 400 homes and businesses, where parts of the town were protected only against floods with a 10% to 2% annual chance. It raised the Broadmarsh banks, added walls in the centre and a raised glass wall at the riverside, replaced the quay wall at Steamer Quay and restored 7 ha of wetland at Queensmarsh with the Dartington Estate.

The Agency's scheme page sets out the works. Higher walls make it less likely the river comes over. They do not take the risk away, and a site behind them still has to account for residual flood risk from overtopping, a breach or a gate left open. Two warning areas cover the town: Tidal River Dart at Totnes for The Plains, Warland, Ticklemore Street, the Broadmarsh estate and Steamer Quay, and Buckfastleigh to Totnes for the river reach above. Our live river levels map shows the tide gauge, and our River Dart page follows the river from the moor to Dartmouth.

Which sites need a flood risk assessment in Totnes, and why so many do

More often than the flood zones suggest. South Hams District Council asks for an assessment for any site in Flood Zone 2 or 3 or in a critical drainage area, and Totnes has two of those. It also wants a drainage assessment with every application, large or small, produced through its online Surface Water Drainage Assessment tool. Policy DEV35 of the Plymouth and South West Devon Joint Local Plan, adopted in March 2019, applies the sequential approach and asks for a drainage strategy in a critical drainage area. Behind both sits chapter 18 of the NPPF: policy F4 on when an assessment is needed, F5 and F6 on the two tests, and F8 on the 2025 National Standards for sustainable drainage.

New homes on Zone 2 or 3 land also face the sequential test, which our guide to the September 2025 Sequential Test update covers. For a small extension, our article on the Environment Agency's standing advice explains what a shorter assessment must include.

Draining a site in the Warland and Bridgetown critical drainage areas

Devon County Council, the lead local flood authority, names Totnes Warland and Totnes Bridgetown among its critical drainage areas, where surface water has to be handled more strictly than usual. It judges drainage against its SuDS guidance for Devon. On a Totnes site the points that matter most are:

• Greenfield up to 1 in 10. Inside either area, flows leaving the site must match greenfield runoff up to the 1 in 10 year rate and volume, even where the land is already built on.
• Allowing for wetter storms. Storage is sized with a 45% or 50% uplift on rainfall intensity, depending on location; the county does not accept 40%.
• Proving soakage. Infiltration has to be tested to BRE 365 at the depth of each soakaway, with its base at least 1.0 m above the highest groundwater; where the water table may be close, readings are taken from November to May.
• Outfalls that can shut. Where the only outlet is a drain to the Dart, storage has to cope while the tide holds the outfall closed, the failure Storm Bram exposed.

Our explainer on critical drainage areas covers the rule in more detail, and our ground conditions and soakaway checker gives a first view of whether a plot can drain into the ground. The 2025 National Standards for sustainable drainage sit alongside the county's guidance.

Baltic Wharf, ATMOS and a new joint local plan

Two of the town's larger allocations lie by the river. The Joint Local Plan allocates Baltic Wharf, on the riverside south of the town centre, for about 190 homes with marine and employment space, as long as the flood risk is mitigated. Its policy for the former Dairy Crest site by the station, known as ATMOS, sets out 62 homes with business and community uses, and asks for flood mitigation that includes improvements to the leat to protect existing development downstream. Further up the slopes, Great Court Farm (74 homes) and Dartington Lane (45) bring runoff questions rather than river ones.

The Totnes Neighbourhood Plan, made in November 2023, adds Policy En2, which asks new buildings to guard against flooding and include SuDS, and records that the flood zone covers most of the industrial area. South Hams and West Devon are now drafting a new joint local plan of their own, and consulted on its scope until 24 September 2026. The council's own strategic flood risk assessment dates from March 2007, so a site assessment has to bring the mapping and climate allowances up to date. Our article on climate change allowances explains which figures apply.

From a Fore Street shop to a Broadmarsh unit: the reports each project needs

Reports for sites between the weir and Steamer Quay

Which reports a Totnes site needs depends on how close it sits to the tide and to the outfalls:

• Every source together. A flood risk assessment for a Totnes address looks at the tidal Dart, the river coming off the moor, water ponding behind the walls and the drains, then at how they combine on a high spring tide.
• For South Hams. A flood risk assessment for planning gives the district council and the Environment Agency the tide levels, floor levels and access that Policy DEV35 and national policy F4 ask about.
• Buying near the river. On Warland, Coronation Road or a Bridgetown street by the water, a flood risk survey for property purchase checks the building, its thresholds and its flood record before you exchange.
• Choosing the site. A new home on the flat ground by The Plains or Steamer Quay needs a sequential and exception test showing why a drier site in the area will not do.
• Rain on a hillside town. A drainage strategy for a Totnes plot traces where runoff goes on its way down to the outfalls, and what happens to it when the tide holds them shut.
• Inside Warland or Bridgetown. In either critical drainage area a surface water drainage strategy holds discharge to the greenfield rate up to the 1 in 10 year storm, as Devon County Council's guidance asks.
• Before work starts. When a South Hams permission comes with a drainage condition, the discharge of drainage conditions brings together the infiltration results, the storage calculations and who will maintain the system.
• Tide and river warnings. With two warning areas covering The Plains, Warland, Steamer Quay and the Broadmarsh estate, a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out what occupiers do between the warning and the water.
• Where the river meets the tide. National maps treat Totnes's river and sea flooding together, so flood modelling can separate the two and set levels for a site by the weir, the leat or the quay.
• After Warland flooded again. Homes on Warland and the streets next to it have flooded in 2002, 2005, 2016 and 2025, and a flood risk assessment for insurance gives a broker evidence about the individual building.
• Units on the Broadmarsh estate. Broadmarsh sits inside the Tidal River Dart at Totnes warning area behind the raised 1980 banks, and flood risk due diligence sets out its defences, tide record and drainage for a buyer or lender.

A South Hams example: at Salcombe, on the Kingsbridge estuary, our assessment and sequential test helped a waterfront building in tidal Flood Zone 3 win permission where the floor could not be raised.

Who handles flooding in Totnes, source by source

If floodwater puts anyone in Totnes in danger, ring 999; if it has cut the power, ring 105. Beyond that, the body to contact depends on whether the water came from the Dart, from the streets or from a sewer:

Our Devon page covers Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and the rest of the county. Nearby, see Newton Abbot on the Teign, Paignton across the Torbay boundary, Plymouth to the west, or every place in our areas we cover list. Dartington, Staverton and Berry Pomeroy lie outside the coral line.

Questions from Totnes buyers, owners and applicants

Whether it is a cottage in Bridgetown, a shop near The Plains or a unit on the Broadmarsh estate, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk. Our chartered consultants at Unda Consulting Limited will explain which reports apply, and every report is checked and signed off by a senior consultant before it goes out.