Flood Risk Assessment in Worcestershire

A flood risk assessment in Worcestershire is read against the River Severn. The river crosses the county from Upper Arley in the north to below Upton-upon-Severn in the south, fed by the Teme, the Stour, the Salwarpe and the Warwickshire Avon. We prepare flood risk assessments in Worcestershire for planning applications, house and land purchases, mortgages and insurance, alongside sequential and exception tests and surface water drainage strategies for each of the county's six district councils.

That covers Worcester, Kidderminster, Stourport-on-Severn, Malvern, Evesham, Pershore, Droitwich Spa, Bromsgrove, Redditch and Tenbury Wells, and the villages between them, across the WR, DY and B postcode areas. Bewdley and Upton-upon-Severn have pages of their own, linked further down.

In the summer of 2007 more than 4,780 properties in Worcestershire flooded inside. On 27 May 2018 another 258 homes flooded at Hollywood, on the Birmingham edge of Bromsgrove district, when 130 mm of rain fell in two hours on streets nowhere near a main river.

Send us the address and a sketch of the scheme: call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.

Two drainage teams, one county council: who checks a Worcestershire site

Worcestershire County Council is the lead local flood authority for the whole county, and it has commented on surface water for major applications since April 2015. The work is split in two. North Worcestershire Water Management answers for Bromsgrove, Redditch and Wyre Forest, while the county's own flood team works with the South Worcestershire Land Drainage Partnership for Malvern Hills, Worcester and Wychavon.

• The northern districts. North Worcestershire Water Management is a shared land drainage service for Bromsgrove, Redditch and Wyre Forest. It responds to major applications on the county's behalf, handles consents for works on ordinary watercourses and can be reached on 01562 732191 or at enquiries@nwwm.org.uk.
• The southern districts. In Malvern Hills, Worcester and Wychavon the county's flood risk management team reads the drainage on major schemes, and the three councils' land drainage partnership deals with watercourses and enforcement.
• The volume of work. In the year to March 2026 the county, the partnership and North Worcestershire Water Management commented on over 2,280 planning applications and more than 140 pre-application enquiries. The Environment Agency gave bespoke responses on 60, and Severn Trent on 326.
• One guide for both halves. Every major scheme is checked against the county's SuDS guide for developers, which asks for a 3 m maintenance easement around each SuDS feature and 8 m beside any watercourse. The county does not adopt SuDS, so a management plan has to say who will look after them.

Building over or culverting a brook needs consent from the right drainage team as well as planning permission. Our guide to ordinary watercourse consent explains the application.

Looking up a Worcestershire address on the county map

Type a postcode into the map to see the river and surface water flood zones, the reservoir extents and any warning area near it, and our flood risk map gives the same screening for anywhere in England. The coral line follows the Worcestershire County Council boundary, which takes in all six districts.

Treat the map as a first screen. In south Worcestershire the adopted plan asks for an assessment where a site has any record of past flooding, and the county council keeps around 1,500 recorded flood spots that a national map does not show.

The Severn, the Teme, the Avon and the Stour: Worcestershire's towns by river

Almost all of Worcestershire drains to the Severn. The county's own flood assessment puts the main risk where rivers run through towns: the Severn at Stourport-on-Severn and Worcester, the Avon through Evesham, the Teme through Tenbury Wells. Villages flood too, mostly from surface water. The Environment Agency runs more than 50 flood warning and alert areas in the county.

Two exceptions run the other way. The Arrow leaves Redditch for Warwickshire and reaches the Avon there, and the Cole and the Rea rise in the north of Bromsgrove district and flow towards Birmingham. Levels on each gauged river are on our live river levels map, and our River Severn page follows the river from Wales to its estuary.

Flooding in Worcester: the Severn, the Teme and the city's brooks

Worcester floods from four directions. The Severn spills along Pitchcroft, Hylton Road and the south of the city, the Teme floods at Powick and Lower Wick, close to where it joins the Severn, and the Barbourne and Laughern brooks flood streets well back from either river. The Severn at the Barbourne gauge reached 5.79 m on 26 February 2020, the highest in its record, and Diglis reached 5.30 m in July 2007.

• Laughern Brook. In July 2007, 16 homes in Toronto Close, Lower Wick, flooded to depths of up to 800 mm, and Storm Dennis forced residents out again in 2020. A £2.5 million Environment Agency scheme of embankments, a rebuilt wall on Old Road and two flood gates, finished in 2024, now protects 26 properties there.
• Barbourne Brook. The brook has its own warning areas at Blackpole, Perdiswell and Barbourne, so a site in the north of the city can be at risk from it without being near the Severn.
• Diglis. The county's report for 2025 to 2026 records that internal flooding along Diglis Avenue was avoided that year.
• The waterfront. Policy SWDPR 51 of the 2026 plan protects Worcester's waterfront and expects new buildings to treat the river as a frontage, so a waterside scheme in the city starts from its flood levels.

Worcester City Council decides applications in the city under the shared South Worcestershire plan, and the county's flood team reads the drainage. The Worcester and Birmingham Canal also meets the Severn at Diglis, and a canal embankment above a site is a residual risk for the assessment to test.

What Worcestershire's own flood records show, 1998 to 2025

The county's records show three kinds of flood: slow Severn floods that last for days, fast rises on the Teme and the smaller brooks, and cloudbursts that overwhelm drains far from any main river. Each entry below comes from the county council or the Environment Agency.

1. April 1998. A flood that struck one river above all others: the Avon, the county's flood assessment records.
2. June and July 2007. Flooding across the whole county from every source. A joint review by the Worcestershire councils counted about 3,500 homes and nearly 800 businesses severely flooded and put the cost to the county at £6.4 million a week at the height of it; the B4084 at Cropthorne collapsed and stayed shut until February 2008.
3. 27 May 2018. 130 mm of rain in two hours at Hollywood in Wythall parish, which the county estimated as a 1 in 2,000-year storm. Culverts throttled the brooks. In all, 258 homes, a business and two schools flooded inside.
4. February 2020. Storm Dennis forced evacuations at Toronto Close, and on 26 February the Severn at Worcester rose to its highest recorded level.
5. October 2023 and January 2024. Storm Babet affected at least 225 homes and 108 businesses in the county, and Storm Henk at least 145 homes and 94 businesses on 2 January 2024.
6. November 2024. Storm Bert affected 84 properties and flooded 53 inside, the worst of a run of storms that flooded at least 120 properties inside between September 2024 and January 2025.
7. 2025 and 2026. The Environment Agency's permanent defence at Beales Corner, Bewdley, was completed, and the Tenbury Wells scheme moved into construction, with flood resilience for 171 properties and natural flood management on the Kyre Brook and the Teme.

The county normally investigates formally only where ten or more properties flood inside, or where life or critical services are at risk. It has published two such reports, for Hollywood and Hagley. Most local flooding is logged instead as flood spots. The 2026 plan asks applicants to check them, so a flood risk assessment in Worcestershire asks the county and the district for those records first. Our note on Section 19 investigations explains why so few floods reach a published report.

Six councils, four local plans: the flood policy behind each application

Each of the six district councils decides applications in its own area under one of four plans: Malvern Hills, Worcester and Wychavon share the South Worcestershire Development Plan Review, adopted in March 2026, while Wyre Forest, Bromsgrove and Redditch each have their own. All of them sit beneath chapter 18 of the NPPF.

The South Worcestershire plan replaced the 2016 version and its policy SWDP 28, so older reports citing SWDP 28 need updating. Its evidence is a Level 1 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment prepared in 2019. Bromsgrove is preparing a new plan to 2043, and held its draft strategy consultation in 2025.

In July 2026 the Government decided to replace the county and the six districts with two unitary councils, one for the north and one for the south, then paused that decision for review in September 2026. Until anything changes, today's councils remain the planning and flood authorities, as our note on local government reorganisation explains.

What the Worcestershire plans ask a flood risk assessment to show

The south Worcestershire plan sets the most detailed tests in the county. The northern plans add their own. An assessment written for one district can fall short in the next, so we check which plan applies before scoping the work.

• Past flooding as a trigger. SWDPR 38 asks for a site-specific assessment where a site over a hectare includes land in Flood Zone 2 or 3, or where there is any historic record of flooding from any source. In Flood Zone 1 the applicant uses the Strategic Flood Risk Assessment to check for other sources.
• Catchment type. The plan grades catchments by their recorded flood spots: medium risk with 25 to 50, high risk with over 50, and rapid response where water rises with little warning. In every graded catchment a scheme must use SuDS and look for betterment downstream, and in high-risk and rapid response catchments it needs a surface water drainage strategy whatever its size.
• Room for the river. Both SWDPR 38 and Wyre Forest's SP.31 require an 8 m strip beside watercourses for maintenance. Both resist new culverts.
• Floor levels in Wyre Forest. SP.31 sets ground floors at least 600 mm above the 1% annual probability river flood level with climate change, and no lower than the modelled surface water level for the same chance.
• Homes in Flood Zone 3. Undefended housing in Flood Zone 3a is unlikely to pass the exception test, the south Worcestershire plan says, and permanent residential caravans are not permitted in Flood Zone 3.
• Bromsgrove and Redditch. BDP23 asks every scheme to address flooding from all sources and to set land aside for SuDS. Redditch's Policy 17 expects development to fall in Flood Zone 1 and asks for a full assessment in Flood Zones 2 and 3 or on sites over a hectare.

Defended sites need one more step. Where a site sits behind a wall or a demountable barrier, the assessment tests what happens if the defence is overtopped or fails, as our note on residual flood risk explains, and our guide to temporary and demountable barriers sets out why warning time matters on the Severn.

Which proposals need a flood risk assessment in Worcestershire, case by case

Policy F4 of the NPPF sets the national rule: an assessment for development in Flood Zone 2 or 3, for sites of a hectare or more in Flood Zone 1, and for land at risk from other sources. The table shows how the Worcestershire plans apply it to common proposals.

Reports for Worcestershire sites, from a Tenbury extension to a Wychavon Town phase

Two questions set the scope of Worcestershire work. What could flood the site? And who reads the result: the district's planning officer, one of the two drainage teams, a lender or an insurer? Our consultants are chartered, Unda is a CIWEM Business Partner, and a senior consultant checks and signs every report. Across the county we prepare:

• Every source in one report. A Severn-side site can face the river, a brook and surface water at once, and our flood risk assessment weighs each source and how they combine.
• For the application. In whichever of the six districts the site lies, a flood risk assessment for planning answers that council's policy, whether SWDPR 38, SP.31, BDP23 or Policy 17.
• Before exchange. Searches flag homes along the Severn, the Teme and the Avon, and a flood risk survey for property purchase explains what the flag means for the house you are buying.
• Proving the site is the right one. New homes in Flood Zone 2 or 3 must be shown to have no reasonably available site at lower risk, and our sequential and exception test report sets the search area with the district concerned.
• Drainage for the application. Every Worcestershire plan asks for sustainable drainage. Our drainage strategy work covers surface water and foul water from outline stage to conditions.
• Water management statements. SWDPR 39 asks schemes to show quantity, quality, amenity and biodiversity, and a surface water drainage strategy shows how runoff is held to the greenfield rate and where it discharges.
• After permission. Where a permission comes with a pre-commencement or pre-occupation drainage condition, we prepare the details for the discharge of drainage conditions.
• Insurance. Storm Babet affected at least 225 Worcestershire homes. For a house in that position, an insurance flood risk assessment gives the insurer evidence about the building itself, which a postcode rating cannot.
• Business premises. Storm Babet affected 108 businesses in the county and Storm Henk another 94; a business continuity flood risk assessment sets out how an occupier keeps trading through the next one.
• Sandstone ground. Much of Wyre Forest and west Bromsgrove sits on a major sandstone aquifer. Where a basement or soakaway is planned there, a groundwater flood risk assessment shows how high the water can rise.
• Main rivers. On the Severn, the Teme, the Avon and the Stour the plan asks for breach and overtopping to be tested behind defences, and flood modelling supplies levels where national mapping is too coarse.
• Getting people out. SWDPR 38 asks for evacuation plans where needed and for warning time to be weighed in rapid response catchments, which a flood warning and evacuation plan sets out.
• Large allocations. Schemes of 500 homes or more in south Worcestershire need a surface water masterplan, and a flood risk feasibility study tests layouts on land such as the plan's strategic sites before they are fixed.

For soakaways, our ground conditions and soakaway map gives a first read of the geology, and the BRE 365 infiltration rate calculator turns a pit test into an infiltration rate. The county's guide says infiltration will generally work at 1 x 10-5 m/s (36 mm an hour) or more, and needs extra storage below that.

Bewdley, Upton-upon-Severn and the counties next door

Two Severn towns in the county have pages that go deeper into their own defences and plans:

• Where the Severn enters the county. Bewdley, with its Severnside barriers and the permanent defence at Beales Corner.
• Where it leaves. Upton-upon-Severn, the Malvern Hills town whose flood gates close when the river rises.
• Across the boundary. Shropshire upstream on the Severn and the Teme, Herefordshire to the west, Warwickshire on the Avon and the Arrow, Gloucestershire downstream, and Tewkesbury, where the Avon joins the Severn. Every place we cover is on our areas page.

When water gets in: Worcestershire's flood contacts

Call 999 if anyone's life is in danger and 105 if the electricity goes off. After that, it depends where the water came from.

The county's Local Flood Risk Management Strategy, adopted in March 2016, sets out who manages each source, and its yearly flood reports record the storms, schemes and planning responses described above, while our guide to the lead local flood authority explains what the county's role covers.

Questions about flood risk assessment in Worcestershire

For a site anywhere from Tenbury Wells to Redditch, call 01293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk.