Reservoir Flood Risk
The Pitt Review into the 2007 floods recommended that the UK
Government take measures to improve preparedness in the event of a
failing reservoir. The outline reservoir flood maps are available
through the
Environment Agency website.
How will I know if I am at risk of reservoir flooding?
Reservoir flood maps are available on the Environment Agency’s
website where you can enter a postcode and find out if you live or
work in an area that could be affected by reservoir flooding.
The maps depict the maximum area that could be flooded in the
event of a worst case reservoir failure scenario. The maps have
been produced for emergency planning purposes and only show the
consequences of reservoir flooding, not the likelihood of the risk
of flooding.
What to do in a reservoir flooding emergency
In the event of an emergency, call the relevant emergency
services (999), and/or the Environment Agency’s Emergency Hotline:
0800 80 70 60.
Further advice on evacuation is available on the
Environment Agency's website.
Advice on what to do before, during and after flooding is
available on our Flooding page.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
FAQ’s about reservoir flood maps, how
emergency planners decide which reservoirs need specific plans, and
the timeframes for these plans to be developed are also available
on the
Environment Agency's website.
The Generic off-site emergency plan
Upper tier (County Council) local authorities
are responsible, in co-operation with their local resilience forum
partners, for the co-ordination and preparation of off-site
emergency plans. It is for local authorities to warn and inform
communities about reservoir failure and flooding.
The Sussex Resilience Forum has established a
working group to develop a reservoirs generic off-site plan, which
can be downloaded from Supporting documents. As part of this
process this group ran a workshop with reservoir owners
(undertakers), who are responsible for on-site plans to ensure that
arrangements between undertakers and the emergency responders are
suitably aligned. The findings from this workshop and the
presentation given are also available to download.
If you are an undertaker and have recently
received a letter from the Sussex Resilience Forum, you are kindly
requested to confirm that the contact information for yourself and
the Supervising Engineer detailed in the letter are up to date. In
line with data protection requirements, personal contact
information has been removed from the publicly available
plan.
Supporting documents
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