Prepare for flooding

The Environment Agency's flood information service is updated regularly; their current flood warning is refreshed every 10 minutes:

How to prepare for possible flooding

You can prepare for possible flooding in a number of ways:

• check to see if your home or business is in a flood-risk area
• find out how to protect your home or business from flooding
• sign up to get flood warnings sent directly to you by phone, text message or email

Get further advice about protecting homes and businesses from flooding from Yorkshire Flood Resilience.

How we prepare for flooding in York

In partnership with the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum, we have well established plans for the protection of the city of York, its people and premises when the River Ouse and River Foss pose a flood risk. Our flooding action plans are triggered by Met Office weather warnings and forecasts.

The York Flood Alleviation Scheme (FAS) is a partnership project with the Environment Agency to carry out major flood defence upgrades within the city. The project focuses on 10 communities alongside the River Ouse and the River Foss and their tributaries, where there is a risk of flooding. New or improved defences are proposed in areas which meet cost benefit rules, as part of our plan to better protect 2,000 properties in York by 2021.

View the York Flood Alleviation Scheme map and a guide to flood defence schemes in York from the Environment Agency.

Localised flooding or surface water flooding

Heavy rain can sometimes cause localised flooding when:

• drains are unable to cope with the amount of surface water
• leaves and litter block gullies during severe weather

Report water and drainage problems online.

Sandbag policy

We prioritise use of sandbags as detailed in our sandbag policy:

Also see

• Current emergency situations
• Major emergencies
• Our major incident response team
• Severe weather advice
• Local Flood Risk Strategy
• Business flood recovery fund
• Driving through floods (SmartDriving)