Partly, and by postcode rather than by village. About one in twelve postcodes carry a high probability of some flood type. Roughly a quarter carry medium. Nearly half carry some low risk. No home in Upper Beeding has flooded in the historic record. Not a village-wide problem, and not a village-wide reassurance either.
The river-and-sea layer is what the Environment Agency publishes as Flood Zones Two and Three. Zone Three, the higher-probability zone that indicates a one-in-a-hundred-year river risk or a one-in-two-hundred-year sea risk, covers around seven percent of the Upper Beeding area, mostly the low ground along the Adur where the village bridges the river. Zone Two, the medium zone that indicates a one-in-a-thousand-year risk, covers about the same again. The remaining eighty-six percent sits outside the mapped river-and-sea flood zones. The pattern is a corridor of higher risk running along the water, with everything set back from the corridor sitting in the safer band.
Surface-water flooding is the layer that has bitten most English villages hardest in recent years, and it runs on a different geometry from river flooding. About one in twelve postcodes here carry a high surface-water probability, roughly one in four carry medium, and nearly half carry some low risk. Surface water follows drainage rather than river banks, so a property can sit well outside Flood Zone Three and still be in a spot where road runoff collects during a heavy summer storm. This is a where-does-the-water-go question, and it needs a postcode-level check rather than a village-level generalisation.
The climate-adjusted flood-zone footprint tells a bigger story. Over half the Upper Beeding area sits inside the climate-allowance zone, which is a forward projection for what could fall inside Flood Zone Three under mid-century climate scenarios. The current mapped zone is smaller. The projected one is much larger. A buyer taking a fifty-year mortgage is looking at a footprint that expands rather than contracts, and any planning decision on new construction here will be made against the future map, not the current one.
For insurance, the practical implications sit on the postcode. A property outside the current Flood Zone Three and outside the higher surface-water bands will attract standard cover at standard premiums. A property inside Flood Zone Three or in a high-probability surface-water postcode will attract questions from underwriters, potentially exclusions, and premiums that carry a flood loading. Industry backstop routes do exist for the highest-risk residential homes at capped premiums, but those routes are residential-only and are not permanent, so any buyer of a property near the Adur should read the flood report before signing rather than after.
The flood-risk verdict lands at three out of five, average. Not a village-wide alarm and not a village-wide reassurance. The buyer's job is to check the specific postcode against both the current river map and the climate-adjusted one, and to weigh the surface-water layer separately, because the honest answer here is address-level rather than village-level.