Key changes resulting from new NaFRA and NCERM

Created: 31 October 2024 Updated: 17 September 2025

In 2025, the Environment Agency published new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion. This includes future scenarios accounting for climate change. 

You can find out more about our new national risk information for flooding and coastal erosion by visiting: Updates to national flood and coastal erosion risk information - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and reading this report: National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024 - GOV.UK.

We have published new and updated versions of: 

• Flood zones, which play an important statutory role in development planning

• Risk of flooding from rivers and sea (RoFRS) 

• Risk of flooding from surface water (RoFSW) 

• National coastal erosion risk map (NCERM) 

There are additional datasets alongside each of these existing products. For the first time, we have published: 

• Datasets indicating the possible impacts of climate change on future flood and coastal erosion risk 

• Flood depth information for ‘Risk of flooding from rivers and sea’ on Check Your Long-Term Flood Risk (CYLTFR) 

• Additional datasets supporting planning considerations

Datasets we have not initially replaced 

The initial publication of our new flood and coastal risk information was just the beginning. We have developed our new national flood risk assessment (NaFRA2) which will enable us to publish many more datasets in the future. 

Some datasets we previously published have been discontinued. We expect to replace these datasets in the future. This includes:

• Reduction in risk of flooding from rivers and sea due to defences 

• Risk of flooding from multiple sources – Risk Band, Risk Contribution, Suitability 

• Risk of flooding from surface water (RoFSW) direction 

Changes to formats and schema for our existing datasets 

The formats and schema of our updated datasets are different to the previous versions of these datasets. If you are a regular user of these datasets, you will need to update your processes. 

We have changed how we present RoFSW depth, speed and hazard information. Our previous RoFSW Depth datasets showed the maximum depth of flooding from surface water that could result from a flood with a 0.1%, 1% and 3.3% chance of happening in any given year. Our new RoFSW Depth datasets show the annual chance of flooding beyond a specific depth, for depths at intervals from 20cm to 120cm. For example, the 20cm dataset shows a map of likelihood of flooding beyond 20cm depth within 4 likelihood bands. The same applies to speed and hazard datasets. We have made this change in response to user feedback that demonstrates this approach is more readily comprehensible to most people. 

Flood Zones 2 and 3 no longer overlap, with clear attribution between the Flood Zones. This is different to how the data used to be displayed where Flood Zone 2 included areas that were Flood Zone 3.

We have changed how we represent the coastal erosion risk projections. We no longer show the 5^th, 50^th and 95^th percentile confidence levels. We now show a single best estimate projection for the zones at risk of coastal erosion from now up to 2055 and from now up to 2105 for the present day, Higher Central and Upper End climate change allowances.