Declaring Flooding When Selling a House: TA6 Rules, Real Cases and How to Check

If a home you are selling has ever flooded, you have to say so. Declaring flooding when selling a house in England and Wales is part of answering the TA6 Property Information Form, which asks whether any part of the property, garden or land has flooded and from what source. A false "no", or a "not known" with nothing behind it, can found a misrepresentation claim years after completion, and in the worst cases the buyer can ask the court to unwind the sale altogether.

This guide covers what the current TA6 asks, why sewage escaping into a garden counts, what the law does to a seller who gets it wrong, and how buyers can check a property's flood history. It uses two real cases: a claim issued in the High Court in September 2026 over a house beside a sewage pumping station in Brockley, Suffolk, and a 2025 judgment in which a seller's false replies cost him a £32.5 million sale.

From 30 March 2026 the TA6 (6th edition) is mandatory for Conveyancing Quality Scheme firms, and its flooding question reaches any land not normally covered by water that has been, whatever the source.

Do you have to declare flooding when selling a house?

Yes. You have to disclose flooding when selling a house in England and Wales: the seller must answer the TA6 flooding question truthfully and must not make a false or misleading statement about it. The TA6 form is the Law Society's Property Information Form, completed by the seller for the buyer's solicitor. No statute forces a seller to complete one, but almost every residential conveyance uses one, and once the questions are answered the buyer is entitled to rely on the answers.

The duty is not limited to dramatic river or coastal flooding. It covers the garden and land as well as the house, and every source of water. A garden that pools after heavy rain, a cellar that takes in water, or a manhole that spills sewage onto the drive all fall within it. The Law Society's explanatory notes state the consequence: "If you give misleading information, the buyer may be able to claim compensation after completion."

A buyer facing a "yes" on the form, or a search that contradicts a "no", can ask an independent consultant for a flood risk survey for property purchase before exchange. That turns a bare answer into evidence about the actual building.

What the TA6 flooding question asks

The TA6 form (6th edition) was launched by the Law Society in October 2025 and replaced the 4th and 5th editions for Conveyancing Quality Scheme firms on 30 March 2026. Its flooding question, 8.1, asks about types of flooding, and the explanatory notes list five:

• Surface water. Heavy rain that runs off the ground or roads faster than drains can take it away.
• Groundwater. Water rising up from a saturated water table, which a groundwater flood risk assessment investigates.
• River. A watercourse overflowing its banks.
• Coastal. The sea breaching or overtopping defences.
• Sewer. Sewer flooding from a surcharged or overloaded sewer forcing wastewater out.

The notes define flooding as "any case where land not normally covered by water becomes covered by water". That definition is about land, not floors, so water in the garden counts as much as water in the lounge.

Many sales still in dispute were made on earlier editions. The Law Society let firms use the 4th and 5th editions side by side beyond January 2025, and the 4th edition asks whether any part of the property, "whether buildings or surrounding garden or land", has ever flooded, with sewer flooding listed as a type. The wording differs between editions; the reach does not.

"Not known" is not a safe hiding place

A seller who does not know can say so, and the notes require it: "If you do not know any answer, you must say so." But the same notes expect sellers to have "a reasonable basis for the answers that you give", to check information reasonably available to them, and to tell their solicitor if anything changes before completion. "Not known" from someone who rang the water company about sewage in the front garden is not an answer with a reasonable basis.

A note on material information

The 5th edition briefly carried questions built around National Trading Standards material-information guidance. Those questions were dropped from the 6th edition and that guidance was later withdrawn. Flood history is still material to any buyer, and the duty not to mislead now sits in consumer law for agents as well as in the TA6 for sellers.

Does sewage in the garden count as flooding?

Yes. Sewage escaping from a manhole onto a lawn or drive is land not normally covered by water becoming covered by it, and the form names sewer flooding as a type. The fact that nothing entered the house does not change the answer to a question about the property, its garden and its land, and the water company's compensation scheme for sewer flooding pays for external incidents too.

This matters because sewer flooding is overwhelmingly external. Water companies in England and Wales reported 50,281 incidents of gardens and other external areas flooded by sewage in the year to March 2025, against 4,808 properties flooded internally. A seller who thinks of "flooding" as water through the front door can answer "no" in good faith and still be wrong.

The paperwork a buyer receives does not fill the gap. The CON29DW drainage and water search asks only about the risk of internal flooding from permanently overloaded public sewers. Garden escapes, pump failures and blockages fall outside it, so a house beside a failing pumping station can return a clean drainage search. The seller's TA6 answer is often the only place that history appears.

A clean drainage search and a "never flooded" reply do not prove a garden has never had sewage in it. Only the seller, the neighbours and the water company's records know that.

What happens if a seller lies on a property information form?

A buyer whose seller lied about flooding, and who relied on the false answer, can sue the seller for misrepresentation. Depending on what the seller knew, the claim is in fraud (deceit), under the Misrepresentation Act 1967, or both. The remedies are damages and, in serious cases, rescission: the sale is unwound, the price is repaid and the property goes back.

The three routes carry different burdens:

The test for fraud still comes from Derry v Peek (1889): a false statement made knowingly, without belief in its truth, or recklessly. Section 2 of the Misrepresentation Act 1967 is why a seller does not escape just because fraud cannot be proved; the burden then shifts to the seller to show reasonable grounds for the answer.

Time does not always run out after six years. Under section 32 of the Limitation Act 1980, the clock does not start while a fraud or a deliberately concealed fact stays hidden, and the Supreme Court set out how deliberate concealment is judged in Canada Square Operations Ltd v Potter [2023] UKSC 41. A concealed flood can therefore found a claim long after the keys change hands.

Estate agents face a separate regime. Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has prohibited misleading omissions by traders, and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine a business up to 10% of global turnover without going to court first. It applies to agents, not to private individuals selling their own home.

The Brockley claim: what is alleged, and what would have to be proved

The Brockley case shows the TA6 flooding question under live dispute. Everything below is the buyers' reported case, drawn from press coverage of their High Court claim, and none of it has been tested in court. The people involved are not named here.

According to the reports, the buyers paid £625,000 in March 2025 for a detached four-bedroom house in Brockley, near Bury St Edmunds. An Anglian Water pumping station sits on neighbouring land about 20 yards away and is said to overload in wet weather. The buyers say the sellers' replies stated the property had never flooded and, in answer to a sewer enquiry, mentioned only occasional flushing problems with a downstairs toilet that the water company repaired promptly.

After moving in, the buyers say, they were told by telephone to avoid showering and flushing in wet weather, because household discharge could escape from manholes or back up into the house and garden. In November 2025 they obtained records which, they say, showed 16 complaint records running up to the sale: months when a downstairs toilet and an upstairs shower would not drain, sewage in the front garden, requests for compensation, a 2023 threat to involve Environmental Health, and five emergency requests for the station to be emptied.

The claim, issued in September 2026, alleges fraudulent misrepresentation. The buyers want the sale rescinded and the price refunded or, failing that, compensation, with losses put at just over £54,000 so far, including £2,112.86 of hotel and holiday-let costs and an £18,085.95 mortgage redemption fee they expect to pay. A letter on the sellers' behalf in February 2026 is reported to have acknowledged a few small surcharges in the garden while denying liability. No defence had been filed when the claim was reported on 3 October 2026.

For the claim to succeed, the buyers will need to prove each element of deceit, and the court rules require fraud to be set out specifically in the particulars of claim. The evidence that decides each one is different:

Sixteen complaints are not sixteen floods: one long-running problem can generate a dozen contacts, and a court will want a schedule of distinct events. And a repair can change what a seller honestly believed. Trade press reported in September 2023 that pumps and monitoring had been replaced at an Anglian Water station named Brockley; it has not been confirmed that this is the same station, but if it is, the sellers may argue they believed the problem fixed. Against that, the TA6 question asks whether the property has ever flooded, not whether it floods now.

A "never flooded" answer is a statement about history. A repair that may have solved the problem does not make the history disappear.

The case also shows what rescission involves in practice. Unwinding a purchase means repaying the price, redeeming a mortgage and accounting for the time the buyers have had the house, which is why the claim is pleaded in the alternative with a damages figure.

What a decided case shows: rescission in Patarkatsishvili

Patarkatsishvili v Woodward-Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch) shows a court going all the way. The buyers paid £32.5 million in 2019 for Horbury Villa in Notting Hill. The seller had answered "not aware" to enquiries about vermin and concealed defects, although pest-control companies had reported a serious clothes moth infestation in the insulation the year before.

In the judgment of 10 February 2025, Mr Justice Fancourt found that the seller knew or suspected the replies were untrue. He rescinded the sale and ordered the price returned with interest and damages, with credit given to the seller for the buyers' years of occupation.

The facts were moths, not water, but the mechanics carry straight across to flooding. A "not aware" reply sitting next to a contractor's report or a water company's incident log is the shape of evidence that turns a disputed answer into a finding of fraud.

How to check a property's flood history before you buy

No single source holds the full flood history of a property, so buyers need to combine several. Start with the free maps, read the TA6 closely, know what the searches leave out, and ask the people who would know.

1. Check the government's flood maps. GOV.UK's long term flood risk service shows modelled risk from rivers, the sea and surface water for any address in England. It is a risk map, not a log of past floods, and flood maps are accurate at area scale more than at the scale of one house.
2. Read the TA6 answers critically. A bare "no", a "not known" on a question the seller should be able to answer, or a blank section is a reason to raise additional enquiries through the solicitor.
3. Know what the searches cover. An environmental or flood search is automated and involves no site visit, and the drainage search covers only internal sewer flooding from permanent overload. A conveyancing flood report is not a flood risk assessment.
4. Ask about the sewer specifically. Where the drainage search shows a public pumping station within 50 metres, ask whether sewage has ever escaped anywhere on the property, whether the household has been told to limit water use, and whether any compensation has been paid. The public sewer map shows where the nearest manholes and pumping stations are.
5. Talk to neighbours and check local records. The lead local flood authority may hold a Section 19 flood investigation report on past events, and neighbours are often candid.
6. Get a site-specific view where doubt remains. An independent flood risk survey before you buy checks every source against the actual building, its levels and its drains.

The flood zone a house sits in is modelled probability, not history: a home in Flood Zone 3 may never have flooded, and one that has flooded can sit in Flood Zone 1. More on the conveyancing side is in what a conveyancing solicitor does about flood risk and how to check flood risk before buying a house.

Concealment rarely stays hidden

Flood history leaves traces in too many places to bury. In the Brockley case the buyers had the water company's records within months of moving in.

• Neighbours and local knowledge. People nearby remember the floods a seller would rather forget.
• Insurance records. Repeat flood insurance 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 investigate significant flooding and publish what they find.
• Water company records. Complaints, attendances and compensation payments are all logged against an address.
• The building itself. Fresh plaster over tide marks, or sockets moved unusually high, show damage that has been covered up.

Red flags for buyers

Some warning signs justify closer questions before exchange: suspiciously fresh redecoration low on the walls, boxed-in pipework or relocated sockets, evasive TA6 answers, a search that flags risk alongside an upbeat seller, and a public manhole or pumping station close to the house. None of these proves a flood, but each is a reason to ask and to seek corroboration.

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. Roughly 6.3 million properties in England sit in an area at risk from rivers, the sea or surface water, a figure the Environment Agency expects to approach 8 million, about one in four, by the middle of the century. Homes in that position change hands every day.

The way to sell a house that has flooded is disclosure plus evidence: declare it, then show what happened, what caused it and what has been done since, such as property flood resilience measures or a repaired drain. A garden that flooded once from a blocked highway drain since cleared is a very different proposition from a house beside a pumping station that still overloads, and buyers, lenders and insurers respond to that detail. A flood risk assessment for insurance or for the sale replaces a bare "high risk" label with evidence about the actual property.

Flood risk does affect the sale. It can move house prices and how quickly a home sells, and it feeds into mortgage lending decisions. Flood Re keeps cover affordable for many at-risk homes but is due to end in 2039, and as NaFRA2 mapping reaches more homeowners, more sellers find out about their risk only when they come to sell. Early, evidenced disclosure is worth more than it used to be.

Frequently asked questions

A seller with a flood history and a buyer with doubts about a house need the same thing: evidence about the building, not a tick in a box. A flood risk survey for property purchase gives buyers an independent view of the actual building, and a flood risk assessment gives sellers the evidence behind an honest answer. Call +44 (0)1293 214444 or email enquiries@unda.co.uk for a quote, usually returned within 60 minutes.