Not from rivers or the sea, but heavy rain is another matter. No postcode in the village sits in a river or sea flood zone. Roughly one in seven carries a high rating on at least one flood measure. None has any flooding on record. In Crawley Down the risk is the rain, not the river.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea mapping, none of Crawley Down's postcodes, 0%, sits in flood zone 3, the band with the highest chance of flooding. None sits in flood zone 2 either, the medium-probability band that surrounds zone 3. That settles one question: rivers and the sea are not the threat here. For a village with ponds and streams dotted across its fields, that is a firm answer.
Surface water is a separate matter. Heavy rain that can't drain away fast enough collects on roads, in dips and against the back doors of houses built slightly lower than their neighbours. River-and-sea zone maps don't show it, which is why an address can sit outside every zone and still have water across the drive. The ratings further down include it.
The Environment Agency's climate-adjusted zone, which adds an allowance for future climate change to the river-and-sea mapping, also covers none of the village, at 0%. On the rivers-and-sea measure, the forward look gives the same answer as today's.
For insurance, the lack of any river-or-sea zone helps, because insurers price those zones heavily. A property with a high surface-water rating can still attract questions, a higher excess or a bigger premium, and insurers price by address rather than by village. Get a quote on the exact property before paying for a survey, not after exchange.
Looking at each postcode's rating on at least one flood measure, where the measures include surface water as well as rivers and sea, about 14% of Crawley Down's postcodes rate high, about 13% medium and about 26% low. These bands overlap with the zone figures above and measure something wider, so the two sets of figures should not be added together or treated as the same thing. Put simply, the zones say the rivers stay away, and the postcode ratings say about one postcode in seven still has a real chance of water from somewhere.
The Environment Agency's modelled flood extents put none of the village's postcodes, 0%, inside the high-risk extent, with or without defences. Nothing needs to stand between the river and the house because the river isn't coming. That answer covers river and sea flooding only. The model says nothing about a blocked drain in a storm.
The nearest tide gauge, at Portsmouth, recorded sea level rising at about 2 millimetres a year across its record from 1962 to 2023. That is a measured historic rate on the coast, not a forecast. For an inland village with no sea-flood zone, it matters less than the drain at the bottom of your road.
There is no recorded historic flooding in the area, at 0%. That is reassuring, because a recorded flood is the strongest single warning a map can give. It is not proof that water has never reached a kitchen here. Unreported floods leave no record, and a previous owner's memory of a wet February is worth asking about directly.
On flood risk, Crawley Down is middling. It is safe from rivers and the sea, and it has a surface-water rating worth checking address by address.