A flood is recorded in more places than most sellers realise, and none of them is under the seller's control. Here is where a buyer can find it after the sale, what the law in England and Wales then lets them do, and what a false “not aware” cost one seller in 2025.
The Thames at Wallingford, Oxfordshire. Photo: Lawrence Hookham / Unsplash (illustrative only; nothing shown is connected with this article)
Published 5 October 2026 · A RISE guide · 8–10 minute read
Our guide to answering the flood question on the property information form covered how to get the answer right. This one covers what happens when the answer is wrong. It is in two halves: where a flood leaves a record that a buyer can find, and what the law then lets that buyer do.
Insurers record home insurance incidents on a shared database, the Claims and Underwriting Exchange. It holds incidents reported to insurers whether or not a claim followed, and keeps them for six years from the date the claim or notification is closed. A buyer cannot search it, but it means a flood claim is a matter of record, not of memory. The form also asks sellers directly about buildings insurance claims.
Under section 19 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, a lead local flood authority that investigates a flood must “publish the results of its investigation”. Those reports are public, they are dated, and they often identify the streets affected. Our guide to what Section 19 investigations are explains when a council has to carry one out.
This is open data showing the largest recorded extent of past flooding from rivers, the sea and groundwater springs, with most records starting in 1946. It comes with two warnings from the Agency itself. An area that is not covered has not necessarily stayed dry, “only that we do not currently have records”. And a flooded outline does not necessarily mean the properties inside it flooded internally.
The drainage and water search in a purchase asks whether any building is “at risk of internal flooding due to overloaded public sewers”. In the sample report we read, that register leaves out flooding from “temporary problems such as blockages, siltation, collapses or operational failures”, and it is about the inside of buildings. So a clean search is not a clean history. Water companies also keep their own records of call-outs to an address.
Planning applications sit on the council's public register, for the property and for the land around it. A flood risk assessment lodged with an extension, or a neighbour's objection describing water in the road, stays there for anyone to read.
Neighbours remember. Parish council minutes, local news reports and community social media carry dates and photographs. And a house keeps its own evidence: new plaster to a consistent height, sockets moved up the wall, a pump in the cellar.
The outcome depends on what the seller knew when they answered.
The clearest recent example is not about flooding at all. In Patarkatsishvili v Woodward-Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch), decided by Mr Justice Fancourt on 10 February 2025, the buyers had paid £32.5 million in May 2019 for a house in Notting Hill. The seller's written replies before contract said he had no knowledge of any vermin infestation, had received no report on one, and knew of no hidden defect.
The court found that he had received and read at least two reports from a pest control company the year before, describing a moth infestation and the need to remove the infested insulation. In the words of the court's own summary, he “did not honestly believe the truth of his replies.” The buyers were held entitled to rescission: the house goes back to the seller and the price is repaid, less an allowance for the buyers' use of the house since May 2019. They were also awarded damages, including stamp duty, other purchase costs and the cost of trying to eradicate the moths.
Replace the pest control report with a drying certificate, an insurance claim or a letter from the council about a flood investigation, and the shape is the same: a written answer that says “not aware”, and a document showing the seller was.
The ordinary time limit for a claim like this is six years. But under section 32 of the Limitation Act 1980, where the claim is based on fraud, or a relevant fact has been deliberately concealed, time does not start to run until the buyer has discovered it “or could with reasonable diligence have discovered it.” A flood concealed at a sale this year can still be a live claim many years from now.
Since 6 April 2025, consumer law has prohibited traders from leaving out “information that the average consumer needs to take an informed transactional decision”. That is section 227 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. It applies to businesses such as estate agents, not to a private individual selling their own home. The Competition and Markets Authority can now decide for itself whether the law has been broken, and can fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover.
The older National Trading Standards guidance on what agents must put in a listing was withdrawn in May 2025, but the duty did not go with it. In our view it is hard to see how a known flood would not be information a buyer needs. If you are selling, tell your agent as well as your solicitor.
If you are on either side of a sale and want to know what the council's own record shows for an address, the RISE Section 19 Case Assessment is £250, delivered to your inbox. For checks to run before you commit to a purchase, see our guide to checking a property's real flood risk before you buy.
Sources: Patarkatsishvili v Woodward-Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch), judgment and press summary. Misrepresentation Act 1967, section 2. Limitation Act 1980, section 2 and section 32. Flood and Water Management Act 2010, section 19. Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 227. Competition and Markets Authority, press release (7 April 2025). Motor Insurers' Bureau, your data rights. Environment Agency, Historic Flood Map. Severn Trent Searches, sample drainage and water report (2025). The Law Society, transaction forms, including its June 2025 note on the withdrawn material information guidance.
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