Areas benefitting from flood defences

Flood defences on our maps

Our Check your flood risk tool and the Flood Risk Assessment Wales map show areas that benefit from flood defences against flooding from:

rivers
the sea
both, where the sources of flooding overlap

We do not show areas that benefit from flood defences from surface water or small watercourses. Contact your local authority for information about these defences.

If we show that an area benefits from flood defences, this doesn't mean that it won't flood. Flood defences reduce, but do not completely stop the chance of flooding as they can be overtopped or fail.

Standards of Protection

Flood defences give different standards of protection. We take the Standard of Protection into account when we show the flood risk for an area.

The lowest Standard of Protection on our map is 30. This means that the flood defence in this area protects against a 1 in 30-chance flood in any given year.

A Standard of Protection of 100 means the flood defence protects against a 1 in 100-chance flood in any given year. This is a higher level of flood protection than a Standard of Protection of 30.

Some flood defences have a Standard of Protection lower than 30. For these defences, we don’t show an area as benefitting from flood defences, but we may still show the location of the defence on our map.

View the Standard of Protection for an area by selecting the 'areas benefitting from flood defences' layer in the Flood Risk Assessment Wales map.

The Standard of Protection in coastal areas that are affected by wave overtopping may be lower than we show on our map.

We will add information about flood defences and areas benefitting from flood defences to the map as they become available.

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