Mostly no, and what risk there is comes from the sky rather than the sea. Almost nowhere sits in a river or sea flood zone. Only a handful of homes are on the high-risk list. There's no recorded history of flooding. The thing to check is the drains on your particular street, not the tide.
The Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones barely reach Holbury. None of the area's postcodes are in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band, and about half a percent are in flood zone 2, the medium-probability band that sits beyond zone 3. For a place this close to the water, that's a thin result. Anyone put off Holbury by a vague sense that the coast is nearby is worrying about the wrong kind of water.
With river and sea exposure this low, surface water does most of the work in Holbury's flood figures: rain that falls faster than the drains and ground can take it. That kind of flooding follows dips in the road and low corners of estates rather than any coastline, so it depends on the address, and a postcode-level figure can hide a problem on a single street.
Allowing for climate change, the Environment Agency's forward-looking zone still covers about half a percent of postcodes, the same share as today. The river-and-sea picture holds up under the extra allowance.
For insurance, a home outside the river and sea zones should usually be an ordinary proposition. A property flagged for surface water can still draw questions or a higher premium, and insurers price the exact address, not the village. Get an indicative quote before instructing a solicitor, not after exchange.
A broader measure puts all the flood indicators together, surface water included. On that basis, about 7% of Holbury's postcodes are at high risk on at least one measure, 13% at medium risk and 37% at low risk. These bands overlap with the zone figures above and shouldn't be added to them. They're larger because they count rain as well as rivers and sea, and a postcode only needs to trip one indicator to be counted.
Counting homes gives a clearer answer than counting postcodes. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists only three Holbury postcodes with any risk at all, covering 70 properties. Of those, 14 are rated high risk, 2 medium and 3 low. Only two of the high-risk properties are homes, which puts the realistic worry down to a very small number of front doors.
Whether a defence stands between the water and the house barely matters here: none of Holbury's postcodes sit inside the modelled high-risk flood extent, defended or undefended. About half a percent sit inside the low-risk undefended extent. In the model, "defended" only means a defence is present, not that a house behind it is safe, but in Holbury the question hardly comes up.
The shoreline management plan for this stretch of coast is to hold the line, meaning keep maintaining the existing defences, over 20, 50 and 100 years. That's a stated intention to keep the defences going over those periods. It isn't a guarantee of funding, and it doesn't add any defence that isn't already there.
The nearest tide gauge, at Portsmouth, recorded sea level rising by about 2 millimetres a year over its record from 1962 to 2023. That's a measured historic rate, not a forecast, and at Holbury's distance from the shore it matters more to the coast road than to most houses.
There's no recorded historic flooding in the area. That's reassuring, but it doesn't prove flooding has never happened, only that none made it into the records.
Holbury sits in the middle on flood risk. The sea barely troubles it, but surface water puts enough postcodes on the flood indicators that checking the individual house is worth doing.