What Is the Flood Forecasting Centre (FCC)?

Formed in 2009 as a joint venture between the Environment Agency and the Met Office, the FFC is a 24/7 operational hub based at the Met Office headquarters in Exeter. Its job? To combine meteorology and hydrology to forecast flood risk across England and Wales – helping to protect lives, infrastructure, and local economies.

Why was the FFC created?

The devastating floods of summer 2007 were a turning point in UK flood policy. Over 55,000 properties were flooded, more than 7,000 people were evacuated, and key infrastructure — such as water treatment works, electricity substations and transport networks — was severely affected. The Pitt Review that followed highlighted major deficiencies in how agencies coordinated their responses, particularly the need for earlier and more joined-up flood forecasting.

One of the central recommendations was for a unified approach to hydrometeorological forecasting. This led directly to the creation of the Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) in 2009, as a permanent joint operation between the Environment Agency and the Met Office. It brought together the EA’s in-depth knowledge of catchments, rivers and flood defences with the Met Office’s expertise in weather prediction and modelling.

The FFC’s mission was (and remains) to enhance national flood resilience by improving the lead time, accuracy, and communication of flood forecasts. It was also designed to support a wide range of stakeholders — from emergency responders to local authorities — by issuing early guidance that could shape real-time decisions, resource allocation and contingency planning.

Since 2009, the FFC has become the UK’s trusted national source of expert flood forecasting, relied on daily by emergency responders, government departments, infrastructure operators, transport authorities and local planners.

What does the FFC actually do?

The FFC provides a range of operational services designed to support tactical and strategic decision-making around flood risk. These include:

• Flood Guidance Statements (FGS): Issued every day to emergency responders, local authorities, government departments and infrastructure operators, the FGS offers a five-day overview of flood risk. It uses a coloured impact–likelihood matrix to highlight where flooding may occur, what type of flooding is likely (e.g. fluvial, coastal, surface water), and the likely severity of impacts. The format is intentionally simple and consistent to allow for rapid interpretation across agencies and to inform multi-agency planning under the Civil Contingencies Act framework.
• Rapid Flood Guidance: Developed to address the need for fast, location-specific updates, this service delivers bespoke guidance for sudden or high-intensity rainfall events where flash flooding or surface water impacts are possible. It is especially valuable for urban areas with limited infiltration and high runoff potential. The FFC works closely with Local Resilience Forums and emergency planners to issue alerts when conditions are expected to deteriorate rapidly, offering localised advice on timing, location, and likely consequences.
• Flood Outlooks: These are longer-range, probabilistic forecasts issued twice per month, aimed at strategic users including government departments (e.g. Defra, the Cabinet Office), utility operators, and major infrastructure owners. Outlooks highlight emerging patterns in catchment saturation, snowmelt risk, prolonged rainfall likelihood, and other contributing factors that may signal increased flood potential over the coming weeks. These forecasts often feed into preparedness decisions at national level, including the convening of ministerial-level response groups during heightened risk periods.
• Direct support: In addition to its forecast products, the FFC offers real-time consultation and briefing services. These include situation reports, technical advice, and interpretative guidance tailored to specific sectors or assets. For example, transport authorities might receive early warnings about flood-sensitive corridors, while water companies may be alerted to potential combined sewer overflow events. The FFC also participates in live response cells during major incidents, ensuring consistency between operational weather forecasting and flood consequence analysis.

Across all of these services, the FFC acts as the technical bridge between complex scientific data and frontline decision-makers. It enables earlier, more informed choices on everything from deploying sandbags to shutting down a section of rail or activating regional emergency protocols.

Importantly, while the FFC is central to flood forecasting, it does not issue direct public warnings or alerts. That function remains the responsibility of the Environment Agency, which translates forecast information into actionable public messaging through its Flood Warning Service.

How does it fit into planning and flood risk management?

Although not directly involved in the statutory planning system, the Flood Forecasting Centre plays a foundational role in how flood risk is identified, managed and communicated at both strategic and local levels. The FFC’s forecasts are used extensively by a range of decision-makers and operational authorities, ensuring that both emergency response and long-term land-use decisions are informed by the best available hydrometeorological data.

• Environment Agency (EA): As the primary risk management authority for main rivers and coastal flooding in England, the EA uses FFC forecasts to inform its flood warning service, manage and operate flood defence assets, and issue strategic advice during major events. These forecasts also feed into the EA’s national flood modelling outputs that underpin flood risk mapping and policy advice to LPAs.
• Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs): LLFAs are responsible for managing local sources of flooding, such as surface water, ordinary watercourses, and groundwater. They use FFC outputs, particularly surface water forecasts and rainfall alerts, to inform their Local Flood Risk Management Strategies, coordinate operational response during events, and provide statutory consultation responses on major planning applications where localised flood risk is a factor.
• Local Planning Authorities (LPAs): LPAs rely on evidence informed by FFC-based modelling when preparing Strategic Flood Risk Assessments (SFRAs). These assessments guide Local Plan allocations and development management decisions through the Sequential Test and Exception Test. While LPAs do not interact with the FFC directly, their decisions are strongly shaped by technical inputs that depend on FFC forecasting.
• Infrastructure and utilities: Operators of national and regional infrastructure networks – such as Network Rail, National Highways, the NHS, and electricity distribution providers – use FFC services to anticipate disruption, implement contingency planning, and trigger pre-emptive mitigation such as asset shutdown or protection.
• Water authorities and sewerage undertakers: Water companies rely on rainfall and surface water forecasts to anticipate overland flow and combined sewer overflow risks. This supports network capacity planning, incident response, and longer-term drainage and wastewater investment strategies, particularly in AMP cycles.
• Natural Resources Wales (NRW): In Wales, NRW incorporates FFC data into both operational warnings and national strategic policy on flood risk and adaptation. This includes integration with Welsh planning policy (TAN15) and natural flood management approaches.
• Government and responders: The FFC is a key part of the UK’s emergency preparedness ecosystem. It supports national resilience through data sharing with the Cabinet Office, devolved administrations, and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs), often informing COBR briefings during major weather events. FFC outputs are also embedded into the Met Office’s Hazard Manager platform.

This integrated forecasting approach is made possible by increasingly sophisticated flood modelling tools and techniques. These combine catchment hydrology, river flow estimates, digital elevation data, real-time rainfall radar and atmospheric model ensembles to provide probabilistic risk assessments for specific locations and timescales. The result is a joined-up, anticipatory model of flood risk that helps planning, investment and emergency services act sooner and more effectively.

What does the future hold?

As climate change increases the uncertainty and complexity of flood risk, the Flood Forecasting Centre continues to evolve its capabilities. Recent priorities include expanding the forecasting of surface water flooding, applying machine learning to improve short-term predictions, and refining how flood likelihood and impact are communicated to a wide range of professional users.

Forecasting plays an increasingly strategic role — not only during live flood events but also in long-term planning and resilience. Concepts such as flood return periods and annual exceedance probability are helping to create a shared language for risk, which is vital in a system involving planners, engineers, emergency services and policy-makers.

The FFC forms an essential part of the broader institutional framework laid out by the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, supporting more coordinated and science-driven decisions at every level of government and infrastructure delivery.

For developers, landowners, planning consultants and asset managers, the ability to engage early with flood forecasting data—and to understand how that data underpins Flood Risk Assessments and surface water drainage strategies — is key to unlocking sustainable, timely development.