Flooding - who is responsible?

What you and the council are responsible for.

Your responsibility

Help yourself! Prepare yourself, your family and your home for flooding

As a householder or business, it is your responsibility to look after your property, including protecting it from flooding.

Find out if you’re at risk:

For ways of finding out if your home is at risk of flooding, please visit the Prepare for a flood page on the GOV.UK site. You can also register with the Environment Agency to receive flood alerts.

Prepare your home:

Prepare your business

A guide to preparing your business for flooding

Make a flood plan

Make sure your property is insured

Owners of land or property near a watercourse

If you own land or a property that has a watercourse running through it or you live adjacent to a watercourse you are a 'riparian owner'. As a riparian owner you have certain legal rights and responsibilities to maintain the watercourse.

Where a watercourse marks the boundary between adjoining properties or land, it is normally presumed that the riparian owner owns the land up to the centre line of the watercourse.

Riparian owners can download a copy of the 'Living on the Edge' - guidance document from the Environment Agency website.

If you wish to undertake any temporary or permanent works in or adjacent to a watercourse you will need consent. Visit our ordinary watercourse management webpage for more information.

Croydon Councils responsibility

We are the lead local flood authority for the borough; therefore we are responsible for managing local flood risks from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses. However, the Environment Agency maintains a national overview and lead on flood risk from main rivers, coasts and reservoirs.

As the lead authority for the borough, all instances of surface water, groundwater or ordinary watercourse flooding must be reported to us.

Our responsibilities

We are responsible for managing the risk from the following: