Perry Green is clear of the rivers and the sea, but about a quarter of its postcodes still rate high for flooding. No postcode sits in a river or sea flood zone. That stays true even with a climate allowance. No past flood is on record. The risk here comes from rain, and the river maps don't show rain.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood maps, 0% of Perry Green's eight postcodes are in Flood Zone 3, the highest-probability band, and 0% are in Flood Zone 2, the medium-probability fringe beyond it. In other words, no river or sea flood zone touches this hamlet. Ask whether a house here is "in a flood zone" and the answer is an honest no to a narrower question than the one that matters.
Surface water is the other kind of flooding: rain that falls faster than the ground and drains can take it. The Environment Agency's river-and-sea zones don't include it, so it has to be read from a separate measure, the postcode-level indicators, where it's counted alongside the other kinds of flooding.
The Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone, which widens the river-and-sea zones to allow for wetter decades ahead, also covers 0% of Perry Green's postcodes. On rivers and sea, the forward look matches the present.
Insurers price surface water as well as rivers, and they work from the exact address. A house on a postcode rated high on any measure can get a different quote from one up the lane rated clear, even though neither is near a river. Get an indicative buildings-insurance quote for the specific address early, while there's still time to walk away.
The postcode measure counts a postcode if it reaches a level on at least one of several flood indicators, surface water included. On that basis about 25% of Perry Green's postcodes rate high, 0% rate medium and about 25% rate low. With only eight postcodes, a quarter is a small handful of places, so the answer depends heavily on which one a house sits in.
The Environment Agency's modelled flood extents show 0% of postcodes in a high-risk river or sea extent, with or without a defence in the model. There's no flood wall standing between these homes and a river because the modelling finds no river flood there to stop. Defences would make no difference to the surface-water risk anyway.
No flooding is on record in the area. That's good news, though a record only shows what someone wrote down, and a hamlet of scattered houses rarely makes the official record.
Perry Green's flood risk is below average, and almost all of it comes from surface water. A buyer who checks only the river zones will think the question is settled.