A little, and mostly from rain rather than rivers. Only a small part of the town is in the river flood zones. About one postcode in ten has a high rating on at least one flood measure. The town has flooded several times within living memory. The River Wey gets the blame, but most of the risk falls from the sky.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea mapping, about 1% of Woking's postcodes are in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band, and about 2% are in flood zone 2. The two zones don't overlap. Zone 2 is the medium-probability fringe outside zone 3, not a larger area that contains it. Together they cover a small part of a town built mostly on sandy ground well above the Wey and the Hoe Stream. Old Woking and West Byfleet, closer to the river, have the most reason to check.
Surface water is where Woking's flood history comes from. The Environment Agency has 41 recorded flood events in the area. The most recent, in August 2006, came from the sewers and was put down to channel capacity being exceeded. The town also had major floods in 1968, 2000, 2014 and 2016. About 2% of postcodes are within a recorded historic flood outline. When heavy rain overwhelms the drains, being far from the river doesn't protect a house.
With the Environment Agency's climate-change allowance applied, the share of postcodes inside the modelled flood zone rises to about 4%. That's the agency's modelled projection for the future, and it's the figure to consider on a long mortgage.
For most of the town, insurance should be an ordinary purchase. For a house in or near the zones, or on a street with a recorded flood, expect insurers to ask more questions and possibly charge more, and get a quote before you commit to the purchase rather than after. The survey tells you about the roof. The insurer tells you about the water.
At postcode level, about 11% of Woking's postcodes are rated high risk on at least one flood measure, 17% medium and 37% low. These bands include surface water alongside rivers and the sea, so they overlap with the zone figures above and should not be added to them. They're the wider net: a postcode lands in a band if any one measure puts it there.
Counting homes rather than postcodes gives a sharper result. On the Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping, 97 properties are at high risk, 70 at medium risk, 374 at low risk and 231 at very low risk, out of 2,236 properties in the postcodes that carry any risk at all. Postcodes with no river or sea risk don't appear in that total. Of the high-risk properties, 68 are homes.
On defences, about 1% of postcodes fall inside the high-probability flood extent where the model assumes no defence, and about half of one percent where a defence is present in the model. A defence in the model means something stands between the river and the house on paper. It doesn't mean the house is safe, and it isn't a reason to skip the searches.
The nearest tide gauge is at Portsmouth, where records from 1962 to 2023 show sea level rising at an average of about 2 millimetres a year. That's a measured historic rate on the coast, not a forecast, and Woking is far enough inland that the sea isn't its problem.
Flood risk in Woking is middling: for most homes the river isn't a concern, but surface water is a real risk, so check the exact address.