What is the Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea (RoFRaS) band?

RoFRaS is the Environment Agency's published dataset banding UK property into 4 long-term flood-risk bands based on the annual probability of flooding from rivers + sea sources:

- **Very low** — annual probability < 0.1% (1 in 1000+ years) - **Low** — 0.1% to 1% (1 in 1000 to 1 in 100 years) - **Medium** — 1% to 3.3% (1 in 100 to 1 in 30 years) - **High** — > 3.3% (1 in 30 years or more frequent)

The bands consider local flood defences (where they exist) but assume no climate-change adjustment beyond present-day. Climate-projected bands sit in a separate dataset (CCRA / Future Climate Info products); the EA's standard RoFRaS is the present-day baseline.

Who uses it:

- **Lenders**: assess collateral risk + flood-cover insurance availability before lending. High-band property is often subject to additional underwriting. - **Insurers**: price home + contents premiums + decide whether to offer cover at all (Flood Re subsidises high-risk properties). - **Conveyancers**: include flood-risk on the property due diligence; high-band properties typically get a CON29 search + an EA Flood Risk Report commissioned. - **Property portfolio managers**: factor the band into asset-level risk weighting + reinvestment decisions.

The EA also publishes Risk of Flooding from Surface Water (RoFSW) — surface-water flooding from heavy rain rather than river/sea — and a separate historical-flooding events register. The Stratum postcode-intelligence API returns river/sea + surface-water bands + the historical-events count + active EA real-time warnings in one response.

Download + use: free under OGL v3.0 from data.gov.uk; the Stratum API consumes the same data.

Source: EA Long Term Flood Risk

Last updated 2026-05-06.