Declaring flooding when selling a house: TA6 rules, the law and how to check flood history
Estimated reading time 16 minutes
If a home you are selling has ever flooded, you have to say so. When selling a property in England and Wales you have to declare flooding, because flood history is one of the material facts a seller must disclose, and the duty is wider and the consequences heavier than most sellers realise. The Law Society’s TA6 Property Information Form, used in almost every residential conveyance, asks directly whether the property, its gardens or any surrounding land have ever flooded, and from any source. Answer that question falsely, or leave it blank while knowing the truth, and you expose yourself to a misrepresentation claim that can arrive years after completion.
This guide sets out what the current TA6 form asks, what legally counts as “flooding”, what happens to sellers and agents who conceal it, how a buyer can spot and check a property’s flood history, and how to sell a home that has flooded without falling into a costly dispute. It reflects the position after the Law Society’s TA6 (6th edition) replaced the 4th and 5th editions on 30 March 2026, and after the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 took over from the old consumer-protection regime.
From 30 March 2026 the TA6 (6th edition) is mandatory for accredited conveyancers, and its flooding question reaches any flood, from any source, affecting any part of the property or its land.
Do you have to declare flooding when selling a house?
Yes. A seller in England and Wales must disclose known flooding when it is asked about on the TA6 form, and must not make a false or misleading statement about it. The TA6 is not a legal requirement in the sense that no statute forces you to complete one, but in practice almost every conveyancing solicitor treats it as a standard part of the transaction, and once you answer its questions those answers become statements the buyer is entitled to rely on.
The duty is not limited to dramatic river or coastal flooding. It covers any part of the property and land, and every source of water. That breadth is where sellers most often trip up: a garden that puddles badly after heavy rain, a cellar that takes in water, or a drive that floods when a drain backs up all fall within scope.
A “no” you know to be untrue, or a box left knowingly blank, is a misrepresentation — and it does not stop being one once the sale has completed.
What the TA6 flooding question actually asks
The TA6 (6th edition), published by the Law Society in 2025 and mandatory for firms accredited under the Conveyancing Quality Scheme for instructions taken on or after 30 March 2026, contains a dedicated flooding question in its environmental section. It asks the seller whether they are aware of the property, or any part of it, ever having flooded, and if so, what type of flooding took place. The form defines flooding broadly as any case where land not normally covered by water becomes covered by water.
In plain terms, the question reaches every common source of flooding:
- Surface water (pluvial) flooding: rainfall running off the ground or roads faster than drains can take it away.
- Groundwater flooding: water rising up from a saturated water table.
- River and coastal flooding: the fluvial and tidal sources most people picture.
- Sewer flooding: a surcharged or backed-up sewer forcing water out.
- Reservoir or other artificial sources: failure or overtopping of a raised structure.
- Internal flooding from an external source: water getting into the building itself, most often a basement or cellar.
If any of these has affected the home, its garden or the land around it and you know about it, the honest answer is “yes”, with the type identified.
“Not known” is not a safe hiding place
The 6th edition deliberately phrases more questions as “are you aware…”, so that a “no” is treated as equivalent to “not known”. That is not a loophole. The Law Society’s own guidance is clear that where a seller answers “not known”, or “no” where it means “not known”, they must have reasonable grounds for believing that answer is accurate. Ticking “not known” to sidestep a flood you plainly experienced does not protect you; it simply becomes evidence of an answer given without reasonable grounds. The safest course is to answer truthfully, completely and from your own knowledge, exactly as the form instructs.
A note on “material information”
The 5th edition of the TA6 briefly added questions built around National Trading Standards material-information guidance. Those questions were removed in the 6th edition, and that older guidance has since been withdrawn. This does not weaken the duty to disclose flooding. Flood risk remains material information that a typical buyer needs in order to make an informed decision, and the obligation not to mislead now sits under consumer-protection law as well as the TA6 itself. In October 2025 the government announced proposed reforms to the home-buying and selling process, including a consultation on the material information shown in property listings, so this area is still moving.
What happens if a seller conceals flood history
Failing to disclose a property’s flood history is not merely poor practice. It carries real legal and financial consequences for sellers and, in some circumstances, agents. Three legal frameworks bite.
Misrepresentation
Under the Misrepresentation Act 1967, if a seller makes a false or misleading statement about flooding and the buyer relies on it in deciding to purchase, the buyer can bring a claim. Once the buyer shows they relied on the statement, the burden shifts to the seller to prove they had reasonable grounds for believing it was true, which is a high bar to clear. Remedies include damages, which under the Act are often assessed on the generous “fraud” measure covering all losses that flow directly from the misrepresentation, and in exceptional cases rescission of the contract. As a rough measure of scale, one widely reported dispute over a London townhouse that flooded after completion involves a claim for around £5.5 million (the purchase price plus additional costs), brought by buyers who allege the flooding and its history were misrepresented to them.
Consumer-protection enforcement
From 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. It carries broadly the same substantive prohibitions (against unfair commercial practices, misleading actions and misleading omissions) but changes enforcement significantly. The Competition and Markets Authority can now act directly, and issue fines of up to 10% of a business’s global turnover for infringements, without going through the courts first. A “misleading omission” expressly includes concealing material information or providing it in a way that is unclear or ambiguous. For estate agents in particular, quietly leaving out a known flood problem is squarely within reach of that regime.
Deliberate concealment and the limitation clock
Where a seller goes beyond a careless answer and deliberately conceals flooding, the law is harsher still. Section 32 of the Limitation Act 1980 suspends the usual six-year limitation period until the buyer discovers, or could reasonably have discovered, the concealment. The Supreme Court in Canada Square Operations Ltd v Potter [2023] UKSC 41 clarified how “deliberate concealment” is judged, confirming that time does not start to run against the buyer while the truth is being kept from them. The practical effect is stark: a concealed flood can surface, and found a claim, many years after the keys change hands.
Taken together, these frameworks make concealment a serious misstep. Claims can arrive long after completion, and they tend to be expensive for the party who tried to hide the water.
What the TA6 flooding question covers
Any flood, from any source, affecting the home, garden or land. TA6 6th edition, mandatory from 30 March 2026.
How to answer it
If you conceal it
Concealment rarely stays hidden
The reason concealment so often fails is that flood history leaves traces in too many places to bury. Buyers have discovered previous flooding through neighbours and even social-media photographs that contradicted a seller’s flat denial on the TA6. In one reported case a terraced house in the North West had been the subject of repeat insurance claims the seller had not mentioned; damages were awarded for the fall in value and the higher insurance costs the buyer then faced. In another, buyers of a freshly refurbished home found tide marks hidden behind new plaster, later tied to a serious river flood two years earlier.
- Neighbours and local knowledge: people nearby are often candid about flooding that a seller would rather forget.
- Insurance records: repeat claims leave a paper trail even when the TA6 says nothing.
- Section 19 reports: under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, lead local flood authorities must investigate significant flooding and publish a dated, official record.
- The building itself: fresh plaster over tide marks, and sockets moved unusually high, betray damage that was papered over.
Between all of these, a flood history has a way of resurfacing — usually at the worst possible moment for whoever tried to bury it.
How to check a property’s flood history before you buy
Whether you are a buyer doing due diligence or a seller who wants to understand the record before you complete the form, a property’s flood history and flood risk can be checked. No single source is complete, so it is worth combining several.
- Start with the government’s free flood-risk service. In England, GOV.UK’s long-term flood risk service covers risk from rivers, the sea and surface water for any address. Wales and Scotland have their own equivalents. Remember this shows modelled risk, not a log of past floods.
- Ask the seller directly, and read the TA6 answers. The flooding question is the primary written record from the person who knows the property best. Vague or evasive answers are a signal to dig further.
- Order the conveyancing searches, and know their limits. An environmental or flood search bundles national datasets into a report, but it is automated and involves no site visit, so it can miss local detail. This is why a conveyancing flood report is not a substitute for a proper flood risk assessment.
- Ask the neighbours and check local records. People living nearby are often candid, and the lead local flood authority may hold a Section 19 report or other records of past events.
- Understand which flood zone the property sits in. The Environment Agency’s flood zones describe modelled probability, not a record of past flooding. A home in Flood Zone 3 may never have flooded, and one that has flooded can sit in a lower zone.
- Commission a site-specific survey where doubt remains. Where a search flags risk, a lender asks questions, or there is a known history, an independent flood risk survey for a property purchase assesses all sources against the actual building and its levels.
Because national flood maps are accurate at area scale but not always at the scale of a single building, a clean map result is a reason to check the local detail, not a guarantee. Equally, a “high risk” flag does not always mean the dwelling itself will flood.
Red flags for buyers
Even before any survey, some warning signs should prompt closer questions.
- Suspicious redecoration: fresh plaster, newly painted skirting boards, boxed-in pipework, or sockets and controls relocated unusually high up a wall.
- Evasive TA6 answers: a bare “no”, a vague “not known”, or a blank section the seller would reasonably be expected to complete.
- Search mismatches: an upbeat seller alongside an environmental search that flags surface-water or groundwater risk.
- Local knowledge: neighbours and Section 19 reports frequently tell a fuller story than the sales particulars.
None of these signs proves a property has flooded, but any of them justifies asking direct questions, seeking corroboration and, where doubt remains, commissioning a professional flood risk assessment before exchange.
Selling a house that has flooded, or sits in a flood zone
A flood in a property’s past does not make it unsellable, and neither does a flood-risk flag. What it does is move the transaction from routine to something that needs handling with care. Roughly 6.3 million properties in England already sit in an area at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water, a figure the Environment Agency expects to move towards 8 million, around one in four properties, by the middle of the century. Homes in this position are bought and sold every day.
The route through a flood-history sale is disclosure plus evidence, never concealment: declare it honestly, then show what happened, what caused it, and what has been done since.
A property that flooded once because of a blocked highway drain that has since been fixed is a very different proposition from one on a floodplain with no protection, and buyers, lenders and insurers respond to that detail. An independent flood risk assessment moves the conversation from a bare “high risk” label to property-specific evidence, which often shows the actual risk to the building is lower than a desktop search implies.
We’ve had a noticeable rise in calls from homeowners who’ve only discovered they’re in a surface water flood-risk area when preparing to sell.
— Antony Rousou, Senior Flood Risk and Drainage Consultant, Unda
Flood risk does affect the transaction, and it is sensible to plan for it. It can influence house prices and how quickly a home sells, and it feeds into mortgage lending decisions and insurance. The Flood Re scheme currently keeps flood cover affordable for many at-risk homes, but it is due to end in 2039, which is one reason lenders now look harder at flood exposure over the life of a mortgage. As more precise national mapping such as NaFRA2 reaches more homeowners, more people are discovering flood risk for the first time when they come to sell, which makes early, evidenced disclosure more valuable rather than less.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to declare flooding if only the garden or driveway flooded, not the house?
Yes. The TA6 flooding question covers the property and any surrounding land, so flooding to a garden, driveway or outbuilding must be disclosed just as flooding to the house would be. What matters is that water covered land not normally covered by it, not whether it entered the building.
Is a flood-risk flag the same as flood history — do I disclose a flood-zone rating even if it never flooded?
They are different things. The TA6 asks about actual flooding you are aware of, not a property’s modelled flood-zone rating — a home can sit in Flood Zone 3 and never have flooded. You must disclose known flooding truthfully; you are not expected to research and declare a flood-zone rating, though a buyer’s searches will usually reveal it anyway.
Who is liable if flooding is not disclosed — the seller or the estate agent?
Both can be exposed. A seller who gives a false or misleading TA6 answer can face a misrepresentation claim from the buyer. An estate agent who omits known material information, including flood risk, can breach the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which the Competition and Markets Authority can enforce directly with fines of up to 10% of global turnover.
How long after completion can a buyer bring a claim?
Ordinarily up to six years, but Section 32 of the Limitation Act 1980 can pause that clock where flooding was deliberately concealed, so the period does not start until the buyer discovers, or could reasonably have discovered, the truth. In practice a concealed flood can found a claim many years after completion.
Will declaring a past flood stop me selling my house?
Not on its own. Many flood-affected homes sell every year. Honest disclosure paired with evidence — what happened, what caused it, what has been done since, and the current residual risk — usually keeps a sale on track far better than concealment, which risks the sale collapsing or a claim arriving later.
Get an independent view before you buy or sell
Flood history is one issue where the law and common sense point the same way: sellers and agents have a duty to disclose, and buyers should never rely on assurances alone. Concealment is increasingly futile in an age of detailed mapping, digital evidence and rising litigation, and a proper assessment protects everyone in the chain.
Unda has completed more than 5,000 flood risk assessments across the UK since 2014, and we work with both buyers and sellers to establish the real, property-specific flood risk behind a search flag or a disclosed history. If you are buying a home that has been flagged for flooding, or selling one with a flood history and want the evidence to support an honest, confident sale, request a flood risk assessment and we will give you a clear, independent picture.
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