Yes, in the parts of it that sit near the water, and that is a meaningful slice of the town. About one postcode in six falls inside the highest river and sea flood zone. Around one in ten rates high on at least one flood measure. Well over a thousand properties carry some level of river or sea risk. Totnes has always answered water with height, and height only helps if your house has some.
About 16% of the area's postcodes sit inside the Environment Agency's flood zone 3, the highest-probability band for flooding from rivers and the sea. A further 3% fall in zone 2, the medium-probability fringe that lies beyond zone 3 rather than around it. The fringe being the smaller number is not an error in the mapping, it is the shape of the valley: the ground climbs away from the Dart quickly enough that there is not much middle ground to be in.
Surface water is not published here as a share of its own. It is folded into the postcode indicators further down, so it cannot be pulled out and quoted separately. What the record does carry is history. There are 31 recorded flood events, about 8% of postcodes cover a recorded historic flood, and the cause logged on the most recent entry is channel capacity exceeded with no raised defences present. A town built up a hillside sends its rainfall downhill, and the bottom of the hill is a tidal river.
Looking forward, about 12% of postcodes fall inside the zone the Environment Agency models once a climate allowance is applied. That is the same map with a margin added, not a forecast of any particular flood in any particular year.
Insurers work from that mapping too. A property inside zone 3, or flagged high on the risk mapping, should expect underwriting questions, a separate and larger excess on flood claims, and in some cases a specialist quote rather than whatever the comparison site returns first. Flood Re, the scheme that backstops flood cover on domestic policies, does not cover homes built since 2009, which means a newer home on low ground can be harder to insure than an older one further up the slope.
Across the 379 postcodes covered by the combined indicator, about 10% rate high on at least one flood measure, about 17% medium and about 21% low. That measure folds surface water in alongside rivers and the sea, so it overlaps with the zone shares above rather than adding to them. The two are different instruments pointed at the same town.
Counted as homes rather than postcodes, the Environment Agency's rivers and sea mapping lists 1,330 properties across the postcodes that carry any risk at all. Of those, 256 are rated high, 547 medium and 183 low, and 179 of the high-rated ones are residential. Postcodes with no risk never enter that count, so it is a tally of the exposed rather than a picture of the whole town.
On whether anything stands between the water and the building: about 13% of postcodes sit inside a modelled high-risk extent with no defence present in the model, and about 13% inside one where a defence is present. Those two are near enough even. Present in the model means a structure exists in the mapping, not that it protects the house you are viewing, and it should never be read as an all-clear.
The Dart is tidal through the town, and about 56% of postcodes sit within 500 metres of the modelled coastline, a threshold the dataset defines rather than a verdict on any address. The median distance to the water is about 450 metres. The closest postcode gets to 12 metres.
Every postcode here is covered by a shoreline management policy, and the modal policy is hold the line across the twenty, fifty and hundred-year horizons. That is a stated intention to maintain defences over those periods. It is not a promise, and it is not evidence that a defence already exists at any specific point.
The nearest tide gauge, at Devonport, recorded sea level rising by about 2.35 millimetres a year across its 1962 to 2015 record. That is a measured historic rate over that period rather than a projection of what comes next.
Flooding is the weak spot in a town that otherwise makes a strong case for itself, and it is concentrated rather than general: the slopes are fine, the low ground beside the river is where the mapping keeps lighting up. Put the exact address into the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk tool before you get as far as instructing a solicitor, because the difference between two houses a hundred metres apart here is the whole answer.