Yes. Roydon has a real flood risk, and it covers more of the village than the river maps suggest. About a third of its postcodes are flagged high on at least one flood measure. The official river flood zones cover only a small part of the village. The difference between those two pictures is what a buyer here needs to understand.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood maps, about 2% of Roydon's postcodes are in Flood Zone 3, the highest-probability band. Another 2% are in Flood Zone 2, the medium-probability band that lies beyond Zone 3. Zone 2 here is a separate set of postcodes, not a larger area that includes Zone 3. On these maps alone, the river barely touches the village. They are only part of the picture.
Surface water, the rain that collects and runs off before it ever reaches a river, has no separate figure of its own for Roydon. It is counted in the postcode-level flood indicators below, and those numbers are much larger than the flood zones.
Allowing for climate change, the Environment Agency's adjusted flood zone covers about 5% of Roydon's postcodes. That covers the river and the sea only. It is a modelled projection of how far the zones could spread, and it says nothing about surface water.
For insurance, a house in one of the riskier postcodes can cost more to cover, carry a higher excess, or get fewer quotes, and that is an ongoing cost the purchase price does not show. A quote for buildings insurance on the exact property, obtained while the solicitor is still doing the searches, gives a better idea of the risk than the village-wide percentages.
Counting every measure together, including surface water as well as rivers and the sea, about 34% of Roydon's postcodes rate high on at least one indicator, about 20% medium and about 49% low. A postcode only has to rate high on one indicator to count as high, which is why this figure is so much bigger than the flood-zone share. Saying a house is not in a flood zone is true for almost all of Roydon, but it leaves out the measure that flags a third of the village.
In terms of individual homes, the Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists just 4 Roydon postcodes with any risk at all, containing 125 properties. Of those, 47 are at high risk, 2 at medium and 7 at low. Postcodes with no river or sea risk are left out of the count entirely, so these numbers describe a small cluster near the river, not the whole village.
On whether anything stands between the river and those homes, about 2% of postcodes are in the high-risk flood extent with no defence in the model, and about 2% are in it with a defence modelled. A defence on the model is a structure the Environment Agency has recorded. It does not mean the houses behind it stay dry. The agency has recorded six floods in the area. The most recent, in October 2001, came from the main river overflowing a channel with no raised defences. That record is the plainest evidence available of what happens when the water gets too high.
Flood risk is Roydon's weak point. On the measure that matters most here, a third of the village is exposed, and which house you buy decides whether you are in that third.