Sharpness has some flood risk, but it affects a small part of the village. A handful of postcodes are in the highest river-and-sea flood zone. Most are not. Nothing has been recorded flooding here in more than half a century. The Severn brought the port this far inland, and it also brings the risk.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood maps, about 9% of Sharpness postcodes are in Flood Zone 3, the highest-probability band. None are in Flood Zone 2. The two zones do not overlap. Zone 2 is the medium-probability strip around the edge of Zone 3, so a zero there just means the high-risk land has no middle-risk fringe around it.
The Environment Agency has no separate surface-water figure for Sharpness. Its mapping does show about 3% of postcodes inside the outline of a past flood. Two flood events are on record. The most recent was in July 1968, when a main river overflowed its channel where there were no raised defences.
With the Environment Agency's allowance for climate change, about 6% of postcodes fall in the high-probability zone. That is the agency's modelled view of a warmer future. It is a projection for planning, and it does not describe what happens on the ground today.
On the Environment Agency's property-level assessment of risk from rivers and the sea, 48 properties in four postcodes carry some risk. None is rated high and none medium, 6 are low and 2 very low. An insurer quoting for a house in Sharpness will go by the exact address, so a village-wide flood map will not tell you what a particular house will cost to cover. A postcode in Zone 3 can still contain a house that the property model rates low. Both of those things can be true, and only the address-level result will tell you which applies. Enter the exact address into the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk service, and get an insurance quote while the house is still at viewing stage.
Counting any flood indicator, including surface water alongside rivers and sea, about 6% of postcodes rate high on at least one, none rate medium, and around 27% rate low. That wider measure counts a postcode if any single source puts it at risk.
The Environment Agency's model of the high-probability flood area puts about 3% of postcodes inside it with no defence present. No postcodes are inside it with a defence present. A defence on the model would not prove a house safe anyway, and here the model does not even show one.
The water is very close. About 29% of postcodes are within 500 metres of the coast, the line used for the whole area. The nearest is about 15 metres from the water, and the median is about 740 metres. For a port, that is the point. For a buyer on the lower streets, it is something to know.
The shoreline management plan for this stretch says "hold the line" at the 20-, 50- and 100-year horizons. That means keeping the shoreline where it is. A shoreline management plan states what the authorities intend to do. It does not commit any money, and it does not say which defences exist today.
The nearest tide gauge with a long record is Portsmouth, on a different coast entirely. Between 1962 and 2023 it measured sea level rising by about 2 millimetres a year. That is what happened at that gauge over those years, not a prediction for the Severn.
Flood risk in Sharpness is middling. The risk is real but confined to a small share of postcodes near the water, and most of the village is outside it.