Yes. Highbury has a real flood risk, and it comes from rain, not from rivers or the sea. No part of Highbury is in a river or sea flood zone. About a fifth of its postcodes still rate high on at least one flood measure. Nearly half rate low. The risk comes from storms overwhelming the drains.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea mapping, none of Highbury's postcodes are in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band, and none are in zone 2, the medium-probability band just beyond it. "Not in a flood zone" is true of every home here, and it tells a buyer nothing about the rain.
That leaves surface water as the risk that counts. Highbury is dense, mostly paved and built up, so a heavy downpour needs somewhere to go, and in a cloudburst the drains are what decide whether it gets there. This risk can change from one street to the next and between houses on the same street, depending on low points, dips in the road and which homes have rooms below street level. A basement flat is a different bet from a top-floor one in the same building.
The Environment Agency's climate-adjusted mapping, which allows for heavier rain and higher river flows in future, still puts none of Highbury's postcodes inside the river-and-sea zones. The future risk is from rain, the same as now.
Insurers price flood cover from their own risk mapping, not from estate agents' particulars, and surface-water risk shows up in their models even where river risk doesn't. A home on a high-scoring postcode, especially a lower-ground or basement flat, may find cover dearer or come with conditions. Get an insurance quote on the exact address early, while there is still time to walk away.
Across all of Highbury's postcodes, about 22% rate high on at least one of several flood measures, including surface water, about 30% rate medium on at least one, and about 45% low. Because a postcode only has to trip one measure to count, those shares describe how widespread some risk is. They don't tell you how deep the water would get in any one home.
On the Environment Agency's modelled flood extents, none of Highbury's postcodes fall in the high-risk river-and-sea extents, either with flood defences in place or without them. So the question of whether a flood wall protects the house doesn't come up here. Nothing in that model puts river or sea water in the street in the first place, and no wall protects you from a blocked drain.
The nearest tide gauge to Highbury is at Portsmouth, where the sea rose by about 2 millimetres a year on average across its records from 1962 to 2023. That the nearest gauge is on the south coast tells you how far Highbury is from the sea. For a house here, sea level is somebody else's problem.
The Environment Agency has no recorded floods within Highbury. That is good news, though the record only shows what has been mapped, and short, sharp surface-water floods in a dense area often go unrecorded.
Highbury's flood risk is a weak point, and it isn't the river risk a buyer might look for first. It comes from rain on hard ground, which affects some postcodes and the lowest floors more than others.