Flood risk and investigation

We are responsible for flood risk management and have developed a local flood risk management strategy. The strategy provides information about potential flood hazards including:
  • tidal
  • river
  • surface water
  • sewer
  • groundwater.
The aim is to understand, communicate and manage the risk of flooding and the impacts they have.


The following documents provide information on flooding on the Isle of Wight:

Flood investigations

On becoming aware of a flood we must, to the extent that we consider necessary or appropriate, investigate:
  • which risk management authorities have relevant flood management functions
  • whether each of those risk management authorities has exercised, or is proposing to exercise those functions in response to the flood.

When considering whether to investigate, we will follow our flood investigation protocol.

We may investigate if:

  • there is doubt surrounding the source or responsibility of a flood incident;
  • internal flooding of one property has been experienced on more than one occasion;
  • internal flooding of a group of properties has been experienced during a single flood incident;
  • flooding resulted in disruption of one or more items of critical infrastructure;
  • a single flood incident resulted in flooding that affects vulnerable individuals; 
  • there is risk to life as a result of flooding.
Investigations have been undertaken for the following areas:

In this section