Yes. In Woodford most of the risk falls from the sky, and only a little comes from the river. Hardly any of Woodford lies in the river flood zones. About one postcode in five rates high on at least one flood measure once rainfall is counted. Where the river risk does reach, nothing in the model holds it back. The river is the smaller part of the story here.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, about 3% of Woodford's postcodes fall in zone 2 and under 1% in zone 3. The two zones are separate bands. Zone 3 is the higher-probability core, and zone 2 is the medium-probability fringe beyond it, so both shares are small and neither contains the other. The agency's property-level assessment of river and sea risk lists no properties at high risk, 61 at medium and 311 at low. Eighteen floods are on record, the latest in December 2000, when a main river spilled over a channel with no raised defences.
Surface water is the part the river zones miss: rain that falls faster than the ground and the drains can take it, collecting in dips and at the bottom of slopes. It does not follow the line of a river, so a home well away from any watercourse can still be on the wrong end of it. The measure that captures it on this site is the postcode-level picture below, which counts surface water alongside rivers and sea.
The Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone, which allows for heavier rain and higher river flows in future, takes in about 5% of postcodes. That is a modest widening of the river risk, and the agency uses it to model what could happen. Nobody has promised the weather will follow it.
For most homes in Woodford, river and sea risk will barely register with an insurer. Surface water can, and a single postcode rated high on any measure is enough to change the quote or the terms on offer. Get an indicative buildings insurance quote on the exact address while the survey is still being booked. The insurer's answer is the one that will turn up every year.
Counting every measure together, including surface water, about 20% of Woodford's postcodes rate high on at least one, about 23% medium and about 41% low. A postcode only needs one high measure to land in the first group, so these shares are broad nets cast over several kinds of risk, and they are a different measure from the river zone figures above. "Close to the forest" is the phrase that sells a Woodford house. The insurer will be more interested in where the rain runs downhill.
Where the Environment Agency models a high-probability flood extent, about 0.3% of postcodes fall inside it with no defence in the model, and none fall inside it with a defence present. Even "defended" would only mean that a defence appears in the modelling, and here there is no defence to point to anyway. The December 2000 flood came from a channel with no raised defences, and the current model has nothing more to say about that stretch.
Flood risk in Woodford is below par. The river risk is slim, but surface water reaches enough postcodes to make it the main weakness in an otherwise strong place, and it varies street by street.