Flood Risk Activity Permits (FRAP): When You Need One, and When You Don’t

A flood risk activity permit (FRAP) is the environmental permit you need before working on, under, over or near a main river, a flood defence, a sea defence or a floodplain in England. The Environment Agency issues it under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016; in Wales the same permit comes from Natural Resources Wales.

FRAP is short for flood risk activity permit. The regime was formerly called flood defence consent, and the older name is still in daily use on site. What most people actually want to know, though, is not what the permit is called. It is whether their particular job needs one at all. For a good deal of routine work near a river, the answer turns out to be no.

That is the question this guide is built around. There are four possible answers: the work is excluded and needs nothing, it is exempt and needs a free registration, it fits a standard rules permit, or it needs a bespoke permit. Getting to the right one early is what keeps a permit off the critical path. Where the work also forms part of a development, the permit sits alongside planning permission rather than replacing it, and the scheme will usually still need a flood risk assessment for planning in its own right.

Working without the permit you need is a criminal offence, and a flood risk activity permit can never be granted after the work is done.

What is a flood risk activity permit?

A flood risk activity permit is a permission granted by the Environment Agency that allows a defined activity near a main river or a flood defence to proceed without harming flood risk management or the water environment. It controls anything capable of changing how water flows, how a defence performs, or how a floodplain stores water.

The legal basis is Schedule 25 to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, which absorbed the old flood defence consent system into the wider environmental permitting framework. Because it is an environmental permit rather than a planning consent, it is an environmental permit assessed against different tests, by a different body, on a different timetable from the planning application it usually accompanies.

When do you need a flood risk activity permit?

You need a permit for regulated work on or near a main river, a flood defence, a culvert or a sea defence. The trigger is proximity, and the Environment Agency applies these thresholds.

One detail here is worth more than it looks, because it is widely reported the wrong way round. Paragraph 2(2) of Schedule 25 measures those distances horizontally from the foot of the bank on the landward side. Not the top of the bank, and not the water’s edge. On a steep or heavily engineered bank the difference between the two reference points can be several metres, which is enough to move a scheme from outside the regime to inside it. Distances from a structure are measured from its foot, or from the outside edge of a culvert.

Measure from the foot of the bank on the landward side. On a steep bank, measuring from the top can put a site outside the 8 metre zone that the legislation puts inside it.

Schedule 25 then sets out what counts as a flood risk activity. In practice the recurring categories are these.

• Structures in, over or under a main river. Culverts, outfalls, weirs, bridges, pipe crossings, scaffolding and erosion protection, whether new or altered.
• Structures built to hold back or divert flood water. Including erecting or altering an existing one.
• Dredging or removing material from the bed or banks.
• Anything likely to divert flow or change water levels. Impoundment, realignment and diversion all sit here.
• Work within the distance thresholds above that could damage a bank, interfere with river control works, or obstruct flood water.
• Work on the floodplain beyond those distances that would obstruct flood water or damage drainage, but only where you do not already hold planning permission for it.

That last line is the exception most often missed. Work on the floodplain of a main river, more than 8 metres from the bank, culvert or defence (16 metres if tidal), only needs a permit if there is no planning permission for it. Agricultural hay stacks, straw stacks and manure clamps in those locations need no permit at all.

The regime applies only to main rivers. Most smaller streams, brooks and ditches are ordinary watercourses, where the equivalent permission is ordinary watercourse consent from the lead local flood authority or the internal drainage board under section 23 of the Land Drainage Act 1991. Classification is a legal status rather than a matter of name or size, so check the Environment Agency’s main river map before deciding which application to make. Misreading it is a common and entirely avoidable cause of delay.

Which activities are exempt from a flood risk activity permit?

Twenty-seven activities are exempt, numbered FRA2 to FRA28 in the Environment Agency’s register of exempt flood risk activities. An exemption means no permit is needed, but it does not mean nothing is needed: you must register the activity with the Environment Agency free of charge, before you start, and your work must meet every condition attached to that exemption. Miss one condition and the exemption does not apply, which leaves you carrying out unpermitted work.

Most of the exemptions cover small, well-understood jobs: a footbridge, a service crossing, a short length of bank repair, silt removal at a structure, habitat work. The table below groups them by the kind of work they cover, with the limits that most often decide whether a scheme actually qualifies.

Registrations are public, incidentally. The Environment Agency publishes a searchable register of flood risk activity exemptions, which is worth checking on an unfamiliar site, because it shows what has already been registered on that reach, and by whom.

Three patterns run through the list and are worth reading before you assume an exemption fits. Several exemptions are closed between 15 March and 15 June, protecting nesting birds and spawning fish. Maintaining an in-channel structure, temporary scaffolding and both silt removal exemptions all carry that restriction. Almost every exemption imposes a standoff from designated conservation sites, of 200 metres, 500 metres or, for silt and dredging work, a kilometre downstream. And the dimensional limits are hard limits, not guidance: a footbridge of 8.5 metres, or 11 metres of bank repair, is simply not the exempt activity.

An exemption you register but do not comply with gives you no protection at all. The condition set is the exemption; the registration is only the notification.

Timing is the other trap. The seasonal windows mean an exemption available in July may not be available in April, so a programme built around one needs the works period locked down early. The same logic applies to the construction phase of a wider development, where in-channel work is often the element most easily pushed into the wrong season.

Which activities are excluded from the regime entirely?

Eleven activities are excluded, and an exclusion is stronger than an exemption: it needs no permit and no registration. Provided the work stays inside the published description and conditions, there is nothing to apply for and nothing to tell the Environment Agency in advance. The exclusions themselves sit in Part 2 of Schedule 25, and the Environment Agency’s working list of excluded flood risk activities is below.

• Emergency work. carried out to manage an imminent risk of flooding or environmental harm. Tell the Environment Agency afterwards.
• Work already licensed by the Marine Management Organisation. tell the Environment Agency, which decides whether a permit is also needed.
• Ladders and scaffold towers. removed daily and stored away from the river.
• Services crossing a river inside an existing structure. kept within that structure's profile, with no working from the river or its banks.
• Property flood protection on a building. door boards, airbrick covers and similar devices.
• Minor works to a highway or right of way. provided they do not affect the bed, banks, water level or flow.
• Post-and-rail or post-and-wire fencing. not on the bed or banks of a main river, with mesh spacing of 100 mm or more.
• Small fish traps. up to 2 m × 1 m × 0.75 m, under a third of the channel width, and 50 m clear of any obstruction.
• Noticeboards. set more than 2 m back from the top of the bank and from any flood structure.
• Cleaning a sediment trap. spoil spread no more than 100 mm deep and at least 8 m from the bank; check whether a waste permit applies.
• Site investigation boreholes in the floodplain. at least 5 m from a defence and 8 m from the bank (16 m tidal), refilled within 48 hours.

That difference is procedural as well as semantic, and it decides where you stand if someone asks. An unregistered exemption is unpermitted work. An unregistered exclusion is lawful work. But exclusions are drawn narrowly, and stepping outside the description takes the work straight back into the permitting regime. Scaffold towers must come down daily. A noticeboard must be more than 2 metres back from the top of the bank. A site investigation borehole must be refilled within 48 hours.

Emergency work is the exclusion most often relied on, and the one most often stretched. It covers work to manage an imminent risk of flooding or environmental harm, and it carries a duty to notify the Environment Agency once the immediate danger has passed. Work that became urgent because the programme slipped is not emergency work, however genuinely urgent it now feels on site.

Exemption, standard rules or bespoke: which route applies?

Once you know the work is regulated and does not fall inside an exclusion or an exemption, there are two permits to choose between, and the choice is made by the flood risk the work poses rather than by preference.

A standard rules permit is cheaper and quicker, but it is all or nothing: your work must fit the published rule set in full, with no variation. This is where most schemes fall out, and the reason is simply arithmetic. Only fifteen rule sets exist for flood risk activities, each one drawn tightly around a single common job. Twelve of them are these (the full standard rules collection carries the conditions for each), with SR2019 No 1 to No 3 completing the set.

Read that list against your own scheme and the ratio below stops being surprising. A 25-metre length of bank repair, a 6-metre access culvert or an outfall at 600 mm all fall outside the nearest rule by a margin that looks trivial on a drawing and is absolute in the regulations. Where the work does not fit, a bespoke permit is the only route, and it is assessed against the specific risks of your site.

Of the 2,191 flood risk activity applications the Environment Agency received in 2024, only around 3% qualified for a standard rules permit. Roughly 97% needed a bespoke permit.

That ratio is the single most useful planning assumption in this article. Unless the work is unmistakably one of the jobs listed above, programme for a bespoke application from the outset and treat a standard rules permit as a saving you might make rather than one you can rely on. Assume the shorter route and you will lose the difference twice over.

How much does a flood risk activity permit cost?

There is no single flat fee. The Environment Agency charges an application fee that varies with how complex the work is and which route it takes, set out in its tables of charges. The figures themselves sit in the charging scheme behind those tables. A bespoke permit costs more than a standard rules permit because it takes more assessment; registering an exemption is free.

• Charges are revised every 1 April, so always work from the current table rather than a figure quoted in an older document.
• Multiple activities cost more. Where one application covers more than one flood risk activity, an additional charge of 25% of the application fee usually applies for each extra activity.
• Environmental improvement is charged at the lowest band, where the Environment Agency accepts the work as genuine improvement carried out on a non-commercial basis.
• A compliance charge may run afterwards, once the permit is granted, separate from the application fee.

The fee is rarely the significant cost. On a bespoke application the supporting evidence, which means survey work, hydraulic assessment and a method statement, usually costs more than the permit itself, and a refusal or a request for further information costs more again.

How do you apply for a flood risk activity permit?

Applications go to the Environment Agency’s national flood permitting team. The GOV.UK guidance on flood risk activities sets out the full process; in outline it runs as follows.

1. Confirm the route. Establish whether the activity is excluded, exempt, or needs a standard rules or bespoke permit. If you are unsure, send the project details to the Environment Agency and you should have a response within 10 working days.
2. Prepare the supporting documents. A bespoke application needs a risk assessment and a management system describing the method of work and how risk will be controlled, together with plans, a topographical survey and the flood risk evidence. Where that evidence needs the Environment Agency’s own modelled levels, request them as Product 4 flood data early, because that request carries its own lead time. A standard rules application needs less, but you must still demonstrate you can meet the rules.
3. Complete the forms. Part A covers the applicant, Part B10 a bespoke permit or Part B11 a standard rules permit, and Part F3 charging and declarations.
4. Submit with the fee. Incomplete forms or a missing fee mean the application is returned. Once everything is in order the Environment Agency confirms it is “duly made”, and only then does the assessment period begin.

The gap between submission and duly made is where programmes quietly lose weeks, because nothing appears to be wrong and no clock is running. On anything close to a flood defence or an environmentally sensitive site it is worth engaging the Environment Agency before you apply, so that the first formal submission is also the one that is accepted. The same sequencing logic applies to discharging the drainage conditions on the same scheme.

How long does a flood risk activity permit take?

Expect around two months for a decision on an application relating only to flood risk activities, measured from the point the application is duly made rather than from the day you sent it. Applications covering combined activities, or any that trigger a public consultation, normally take around four months. Complex or high-interest cases take longer still, and a request for further information stops the clock.

Building that lead time into the programme, rather than discovering it when the contractor is ready to mobilise, is the simplest way to stop the permit becoming the thing that holds up the site, and it is the same discipline that keeps construction-stage flood risk under control on the rest of the programme.

Can you apply for a flood risk activity permit retrospectively?

No. A flood risk activity permit cannot be granted after the work has been done. Carrying out a regulated activity without the permit you need is an offence in its own right, whether or not you apply afterwards, and the Environment Agency assesses unauthorised works critically. This is a harder rule than the planning system’s, where a retrospective application is at least available.

Approval is never guaranteed once the work is in the ground, and you may be required to undo it. Because the same rule applies to ordinary watercourse consent, there is no watercourse anywhere in England, main river or otherwise, where after-the-fact permission is a fallback you can plan around.

What happens if you do not get a permit?

Working without a required permit exposes you to enforcement and to cost, usually in that order.

• Remediation notices. The Environment Agency can require you to stop work and put things right, including removing or altering what has been built.
• Fines and prosecution. Financial penalties and prosecution are both available for non-compliance.
• Costly delay. Unpermitted work stopped mid-programme almost always costs more than the permit would have, once delay, redesign and remediation are added up.

Holding planning permission is no protection. Planning consent and a flood risk activity permit are separate approvals with different tests and different decision-makers, and enforcement can follow even where the planning application was granted without objection.

Flood risk activity permits in Wales

In Wales the permit is issued by Natural Resources Wales rather than the Environment Agency, under the same 2016 regulations, and the thresholds are the same: 8 metres on a non-tidal main river, 16 metres on a tidal one or from the base of a sea defence, and 8 metres from the base of a remote defence. Exemptions and exclusions work the same way. Check the requirements on the Natural Resources Wales permit pages.

The wider planning framework is where Wales diverges. Development flood risk in Wales runs on TAN15 rather than the English flood zones, and the planning-stage document is a flood consequences assessment rather than a flood risk assessment. The permit and the planning evidence are separate in Wales exactly as they are in England.

What makes a flood risk activity permit application succeed?

Beyond the paperwork, four technical points decide whether a bespoke application runs smoothly. All four are evidence questions rather than form-filling ones.

• No increase in flood risk. The work must not worsen flood risk upstream or downstream. Where a scheme takes volume out of the floodplain, compensatory storage is usually required on a level-for-level basis, and demonstrating that takes hydraulic evidence rather than assertion.
• Fluvial and tidal conditions behave differently. Non-tidal reaches are about maintaining natural flow paths and sediment movement. Tidal reaches add surge, saline intrusion and erosion, which is why the thresholds double to 16 metres.
• Environmental and ecological impact. Depending on the work, a Water Framework Directive assessment may be required, and biodiversity gains such as fish passes or bank restoration are actively encouraged.
• Construction method. Low-impact methods make consent more likely, and temporary measures such as cofferdams or silt barriers are generally expected to keep sediment and pollutants out of the watercourse during the works.

The first of those is where most bespoke applications are won or lost, and it is the part that overlaps directly with the planning evidence a development needs anyway. Demonstrating no detriment upstream or downstream means modelling the reach, quantifying any level-for-level compensatory storage, checking it against the level-for-level principle, and testing the result against the climate change allowances that apply to the scheme’s lifetime. On a site inside Flood Zone 2 or 3, that work is needed for the planning application regardless, and the two exercises are more usefully run as one.

Frequently asked questions

A flood risk activity permit is rarely the hard part of a scheme. The hard part is proving the work leaves flood risk no worse upstream or downstream. That is the modelling, the floodplain volumes and the compensatory storage, and it has to satisfy the Environment Agency and the planning authority at the same time. Unda prepares that evidence: flood risk assessments for planning and 1D and 2D hydraulic modelling for developers, contractors and landowners across England and Wales.