Yes. Of all the risks to check before buying here, flooding is the big one. About a fifth of the area's postcodes sit in the highest-risk river flood zone. Hundreds of properties are rated high risk. Flooding has been recorded here over a hundred times. There are defences, but a defence on a map isn't a promise.
The Environment Agency's mapping puts about 20% of the East Peckham area's postcodes in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band for river and sea flooding. Another 13% sit in flood zone 2, the medium-probability ring beyond it. The two zones don't overlap, so zone 2 is the extra fringe, not a bigger zone containing zone 3. Here the danger comes from the Medway and its tributaries, not from the sea.
Surface water is the other half of the story. There are 104 recorded flood events in the area, and the most recent one on record, in December 2013, was caused by local drainage and surface water rather than the river. About 43% of postcodes fall within the Upper Medway Internal Drainage Board's district, which tells you how much of this land has to be kept drained. The village formed a flood relief partnership in 2003 and later built a dam on the Coult Stream at Bullen Farm to hold back floodwater. People here already know about the risk.
Looking ahead, the Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone takes in about 36% of postcodes. That's the modelled extent once a changing climate is allowed for. It isn't a forecast for any one house, but it shows where the flood edge is expected to move.
That risk carries through to insurance. A house in a high-risk band can be harder to insure and more expensive when it is, and the premium is decided by the insurer's view of that exact address, not the village average. Estate agents don't usually volunteer that part.
Looking postcode by postcode, about 19% are rated high risk on at least one flood measure, 15% medium on at least one and 36% low on at least one. Those bands include surface water as well as rivers and sea, and they overlap with the zone figures above. They measure something different and can't be added to them.
Counting properties is more useful than counting postcodes. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists 1,449 properties in postcodes that carry some risk. Of those, 272 are rated high risk, 150 medium, 599 low and 218 very low, and 165 of the high-risk properties are homes. Postcodes with no river or sea risk don't appear in the list at all, so the 1,449 isn't every property in the area.
Then the question buyers forget to ask: is anything between the water and the house? About 23% of postcodes fall inside the high-risk extent with defences left out of the model. With defences included, about 19% still do. So even allowing for defences, nearly one postcode in five is still in the high-risk area, and "defended" only means a defence exists in the model. It says nothing about how that defence performs on the night.
The coast is further away than the paperwork might suggest, with a median distance of about 6.8 kilometres, though about 47% of postcodes still fall under a shoreline management plan. The plan's most common policy for the next 20 years is to hold the line, meaning keep the existing defences. For the 50-year and 100-year horizons it changes to managed realignment, which means letting the shoreline move back in a controlled way. A policy is a stated intention, not a guarantee, and not a defence that already exists.
The nearest tide gauge, at Dover, recorded sea level rising by about 2 millimetres a year over its record from 1961 to 2010. That's a measured historical rate, not a prediction.
Flooding is East Peckham's weakest point, and there's no gentler way to say it. Some streets here are fine and some are genuinely exposed, and you won't know which kind a house is on until you've checked its exact address.