Chard's flood risk is a rainfall problem rather than a river problem. Almost nothing in the town sits in the river-and-sea flood zones. Nothing has been recorded flooding here. What risk exists arrives down a hillside and off a road on its way to a drain. Somerset's reputation for water sitting on the levels does not transfer to a town perched on the watershed, where the gutters cannot even agree which sea to head for.
The Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones cover about half a percent of the town's postcodes in zone 3, the higher-probability band, and none at all in zone 2, which is the medium-probability fringe lying beyond zone 3 rather than wrapped around it. On rivers, that is about as close to a clean sheet as an English town gets.
Irrelevant rivers do not make a town dry. Across the 366 postcodes assessed on the flood indicators, what registers here is the surface-water kind: rain landing faster than the drains can take it, on sloping ground where water has a choice of directions and takes several. Surface water is the risk that never appears on a flood-zone map and appears reliably in a wet October, which is why it catches people who did the search and stopped reading after the zone.
Adding the climate allowance changes nothing material. About half a percent of postcodes fall inside the climate-adjusted zone, the same share as sits in zone 3 today. Whatever the coming decades do to rainfall totals, the rivers are not the mechanism by which this town gets wet.
For insurance, that combination works in your favour with one condition attached. Insurers price the river-and-sea maps hardest, and most Chard addresses sit clear of them. Where a property falls in one of the high-rated surface-water postcodes, the quote will notice, so get an indicative quote on the exact address before instructing a solicitor rather than assuming the town's overall position covers your particular street.
On the broader postcode indicators, which fold surface water in alongside rivers and sea, about 12% of Chard postcodes carry a high rating on at least one measure, about 14% a medium and about 33% a low. Those bands overlap with the flood-zone shares rather than adding to them, and they count postcodes, not houses.
Counting houses gives a sharper picture. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping records properties rather than postcodes, and only postcodes carrying some risk appear in it at all. Seven Chard postcodes appear, covering 276 properties. Within those, 51 are rated high, 8 medium and 6 low, and just 1 of the high-rated properties is residential. The exposure sits on commercial and industrial ground far more than on anybody's front door.
On the modelled flood extents, about half a percent of postcodes fall inside a high-risk extent with a defence present in the model, and about half a percent inside a high-risk extent with nothing modelled in front of them. Defended means a defence exists in the model. It does not mean the water has been solved, and it is not a reason to skip a survey.
Sea level is a remote concern for somewhere this far inland, but the nearest tide gauge, at Devonport, recorded a rise of about 2.35 millimetres a year across its record from 1962 to 2015. That is a measured historic rate over that period, not a forecast, and its bearing on Chard is indirect.
No historic flooding is recorded for the area. That is genuinely reassuring, and it deserves the precise version rather than the comforting one: no recorded event is not proof that no water has ever come through a door here, because records only start when somebody starts keeping them.
Flood risk in Chard lands squarely in the middle, saved by the rivers and complicated by the rain. Judge the postcode rather than the town, because the whole of the difference lives at that scale.