Yes, in places, and the risk depends heavily on which street you're looking at. None of the village falls inside the main river flood zones. About one postcode in five still rates high on at least one flood measure. A few dozen properties carry a high risk from the river. Flood is the main thing to check in Kennington, even though it doesn't affect most homes.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, none of Kennington's postcodes fall in Zone 3, the highest-probability band. None fall in Zone 2 either, which is the medium-probability fringe drawn beyond Zone 3. The Thames forms one edge of the village, and neither zone touches a single Kennington postcode.
That leaves the other measures, surface water from heavy rain among them. Flooding of this kind comes from rain the ground and drains can't handle, and the river zones don't measure it at all. A postcode can sit outside both zones and still collect water on its streets.
The Environment Agency also draws a zone allowing for climate change, and it takes in about 2% of Kennington's postcodes. That is a modelled look ahead and a small share, but it isn't nothing.
For insurance, a home in one of the higher-risk spots may find cover costs more or comes with conditions, while most of the village should find the market much as it would anywhere else. The buyer who suffers is the one who assumes the village average applies to their house.
On the wider postcode measure, which counts a postcode if it rates on any one of several flood indicators, rivers and surface water included, about 20% of Kennington's postcodes rate high, 16% medium and 19% low. It's a broader net than the flood zones, which is why it catches postcodes the zones leave out.
The more useful number is a count of homes. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping, which assesses property by property, lists 31 properties at high risk, 4 at medium risk and 11 at low risk, out of 230 properties on the postcodes it lists. Only postcodes carrying some risk appear in that list at all, and in Kennington there are four of them. The two measures work at different scales. One asks whether a postcode falls inside a zone, and the other assesses buildings one at a time. Get the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk result for the exact address, and have your conveyancer's environmental search confirm it, because 31 homes on four postcodes is a very local problem.
The question of defences barely comes up here. None of Kennington's postcodes fall inside the modelled high-probability flood extent, defended or undefended. Where defences do appear in that model, it only means a defence is present in the model. That doesn't make a property safe, and here it doesn't apply either way.
The nearest tide gauge in the national records is at Portsmouth, where sea level rose about 2 millimetres a year between 1962 and 2023. That is what the gauge measured. The nearest gauge being on the south coast tells you how far the sea is from Kennington.
The Environment Agency's historic flood records show no recorded flooding in the area. That is reassuring as far as it goes. It means nothing has been recorded, which is different from proof that water has never come through.
Flood risk is a weak point for Kennington. For most of the village it's a background worry, but for a few dozen homes it's the first question to answer.