Yorkletts is out of the sea's reach but not out of the rain's. No postcode sits in the river-and-sea flood zones. About one in seven carries a high flag on some flood measure. The coast is a couple of kilometres away. The water to worry about comes off the land, and the beach is a red herring.
Start with the rivers and the sea. In the Environment Agency's mapping, 0% of Yorkletts postcodes are in flood zone 3, the high-probability band, and 0% are in flood zone 2, the medium-probability fringe beyond it. By that measure, the village sits outside both bands. Buyers who stop reading at this point tend to be the ones who later discover the other measures exist.
Surface water is the risk those zones don't cover. Rain that can't drain fast enough collects on roads, in dips and against back doors, whatever the distance to the coast. Yorkletts has no separate surface-water share of its own. Surface water is folded into the postcode indicators set out below, and that's where the risk here shows up.
Looking forward, the Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone also covers 0% of the area's postcodes. On the river-and-sea measure, the allowance for a wetter future doesn't pull Yorkletts in.
Insurers don't price by flood zone alone. They look at the specific address and every indicator attached to it, surface water included, so a home outside the zones can still come back with an awkward quote. Get an indicative quote on the exact property before the solicitor is instructed, not after the survey has been paid for.
At postcode level, and across at least one flood measure including surface water, about 15% of Yorkletts postcodes rate high, 15% rate medium and 46% rate low. Those bands overlap with each other, and with nothing in the zone figures above, so they shouldn't be added together or read as the same thing. They show that a meaningful slice of the village has a flag on it somewhere, and that the flag comes from water on the land rather than the sea.
Counting homes rather than postcodes narrows it further. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea property mapping lists only one Yorkletts postcode as carrying any risk at all, covering 29 properties. One of those properties is rated high risk, and it isn't residential. None is rated medium, low or very low. For a householder, the river-and-sea exposure here is close to nil.
On defences, the modelling puts 0% of postcodes inside the high-risk extent, whether undefended or defended. The question of whether a wall stands between the water and the house doesn't come up on this model, because the modelled water doesn't reach the houses. A defence showing in a model has never been the same thing as a dry kitchen anyway.
The coastline's official plan is to hold the line over the next 20, 50 and 100 years. That's the stated intention in the shoreline management plan to keep maintaining defences along that stretch. It's a policy, not a guarantee, and it doesn't mean a new wall. Policies get reviewed, and funding decisions get made in rooms the homeowner isn't in.
The nearest tide gauge, at Dover, recorded sea level rising at about 2.2 millimetres a year over its 1961 to 2010 record. That's a measured historic rate at one gauge, and it isn't a forecast for Yorkletts.
There is no recorded historic flooding in the area. That is reassuring. It means nobody has written down a flood here, which is not quite the same as a flood never having happened, and it says nothing about a heavy storm in a lane with a blocked drain.
Flood risk is Yorkletts' weak spot, and the reason is surface water rather than the sea. Check the exact address on every measure before you fall for the house.