This page is the water that arrives at ground level. A mark that begins on the ceiling, or a drip you can trace to the loft, belongs on the roof-leak page. A trough spilling over the fascia belongs on the gutter page. A patch that appears after a shower, with a dry outside wall, belongs on the damp-patch page. If the path, the air brick or a downstairs pan is wet while the street is taking rain, stay here.
The count of four alerts will change. Treat it as the snapshot on the Check for flooding service at 2:20am on 8 October 2026, for England. Open that page again before you decide the morning is clear. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish their own flood services. A figure for England does not describe a street in Glasgow, Cardiff or Belfast.
What the outlook said, and what this morning showed
On 11 September 2026 the Met Office published its note on the autumn outlook and El Niño. The three-month outlook put the chance of a warm, wet autumn at about one and a half to two times the usual chance, with a greater chance of wind later in the season. El Niño was already near record strength in the tropical Pacific, with room to strengthen further before a winter peak. Historically that pattern lines up with a warmer, wetter, stormier late autumn and early winter in the UK and northern Europe. Chief Meteorologist Ian Lisk said a wetter season would be consistent with that history, and that El Niño is only one of several drivers. A very strong event does not, by itself, decide how severe the impacts will be here. A seasonal outlook also cannot name the street, or the day.
The page you can act on is shorter. At 2:20am on 8 October, the England service listed four flood alerts. An alert means flooding is possible. A flood warning means flooding is expected. A severe flood warning means danger to life. Those are different instructions, and the live page is the one that knows which applies to your postcode. The five-day note issued at 10:30am on 7 October said local surface-water flooding was possible that Wednesday in parts of the South and East of England and the East Midlands. It said land, roads and some properties might flood, with travel disruption. Wednesday has passed. Alerts can still be in force the next morning, which is why the 2:20am line still matters if you are in England and you can see water.
Read the warning for your nation before you treat this article’s count as current. If the live page has dropped the alert, and your floor is dry, you are into the “after it drains” section, not the emergency one.
Surface water is rain that the drains, the ground and the road cannot take away quickly enough. It can pool on a path, push through an air brick, or find a door that sits below the pavement. It is a different route from a river overtopping a bank, and a different route from a tile missing on the roof. The seasonal note raises the chance of wet weather later in the autumn. It does not tell you that your particular gully failed this morning. You still have to look, from inside.
Which water you are looking at
Write down three things before you phone anyone: where the water is entering, whether the street is wet as well, and whether it smells of sewage. Those three facts decide the trade. A roofer cannot stop a surcharging sewer. A plumber cannot rebuild a river bank.
Match the water you can see to the next call, and stay indoors while you do it.
| What you can see from a dry floor | What it usually means | Who deals with it |
|---|---|---|
| Rain sheeting across the path and in at the door, with the street under water | Surface water the road drains are not clearing | Follow the flood warning. A builder, later, if the threshold lets water in every time |
| Water through an air brick into the void under a timber floor | The outside ground level is above that opening | Stay out of the void. Covers you already own are for a warning in force, not a permanent seal |
| A downstairs loo, shower or gully filling while nobody is running a tap | A sewer or a private drain surcharging | Your water company if it is the public sewer. A plumber if the drain is on your property |
| Clean water only where a pipe has let go, and the street is dry | A burst on your supply, or a leak inside | Stopcock, if you can reach it on a dry floor, then plumbing and heating |
| A drip that starts on the ceiling or in the loft | Water from above | The roof-leak page, then a roofer if it is active |
Air bricks exist so a suspended timber floor can ventilate. GOV.UK’s flood guidance says that if you already have flood protection, such as barriers or air-brick covers, you can use them when a warning says flooding is expected. Fitting a cover for the hours the warning lasts is that advice. Cementing the brick shut this afternoon is a different job: it stops the ventilation the floor was built with. Leave that conversation until the street is dry, and have it with a builder, not with a bag of mortar while the path is under water.
A toilet that fills from the pan, with a sewage smell, is foul water. Keep children and pets away from it. Do not mop it into the kitchen sink and call it rain. Report an overflowing sewer to your water company. The number is on the bill. If the backup is only on a private drain inside your boundary, that call is a plumber, once it is safe to be on the floor. This site does not send either of them.
What you can check without stepping into the water
GOV.UK tells you to move family, pets and important items upstairs when a flood warning says flooding is expected, to turn off gas, electricity and water only if it is safe, and to avoid touching an electrical switch while you are standing in water. It also says not to walk, cycle or drive through flood water. The checks below stay inside that line. They are things you can see from a landing, a dry hallway, or an upstairs window.
- Open the flood service for your nation and read the wording for your area. An alert, a warning and a severe warning are not the same sentence. If you are told to evacuate, that instruction outranks this list.
- From upstairs, see whether the street, the path and a neighbour’s garden are under water as well. Water that is only inside, with a dry road, is more likely a pipe or an appliance. Water that is also in the street is the weather and the drains.
- Note the smell and the colour. Clear water at the door during rain is surface water until something else proves otherwise. Brown water, solids, or a smell from a downstairs loo is a sewer problem.
- If a warning is in force and you already own door barriers or air-brick covers, fit them from dry ground. Do not wade to the front path to fetch them.
- Find the stopcock only if the floor around it is dry. Turning off the incoming main stops water from your supply. It does not stop rain under the door, and it does not stop a sewer coming up a pan. Leave the stopcock alone if you would have to stand in water to reach it.
- Leave manhole covers where they are. Lifting one in a flood can release a sudden surge, and the cover is heavy. Clearing a road gully is not a homeowner job while water is moving.
- Photograph the waterline from a dry room, for your insurer, once people are safe. Your policy wording decides what is covered. This page does not.
Keep documents, medication and a phone charger upstairs if the warning says the ground floor may go. A torch is more useful than candles if the lights fail. If the power does go, in Great Britain you can report a power cut on 105, which GOV.UK describes as a free call. Northern Ireland uses its own network operator. Have the number from your supplier to hand rather than guessing a GB line will answer there.
Tenants should tell the landlord as soon as they can do it from safety, and say which rooms are wet and since when. Do not start taking up floors or fitting a flood door as if you owned the building. Owner-occupiers can talk to a builder after the water has gone. Neither of you needs an account on this site to read the list of businesses.
When the checklist stops
Some situations are no longer a walk-through. Put the list down.
- A severe flood warning is in force, or the emergency services have told you to leave. GOV.UK says call 999 if you or someone else is in immediate danger, and do not go back for a vehicle or a bag.
- Water is at the consumer unit, or around sockets, and you are standing in it. Do not touch switches. If there is an electrical hazard, GOV.UK points you to your electricity company or to 105 in the guidance for England.
- You smell gas. Leave the house, avoid electrical switches, and call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999.
- The carbon monoxide alarm sounds. Leave. A generator, a petrol pump or a barbecue used indoors or in a garage to “dry the place out” is a common way that alarm earns its keep. The alarm page is the test you do on an ordinary day, before a planned fire, not the response when it is already sounding.
- Sewage is coming up and people are still in that room. Get them out of the room. Report the public sewer to the water company. Do not add bleach “to be safe” and then stay in the spray.
Flood water hides open drains, missing covers and uneven paving. GOV.UK says not to walk, cycle or drive through it. Moving the car to higher ground is only for when you can do that without entering the water.
Pumping water off a property can need a permit. GOV.UK says to check with the Environment Agency before you pump into a river, ditch or other watercourse, with your water company before you pump into a public sewer, and with the highways authority before you pump into a street drain. The fire service may help pump a building. They can charge, and they can point you at the permit. Borrowing a neighbour’s pump and running the hose into the road is how a helpful hour becomes a blocked sewer or a polluted brook.
If the home is not fit to sleep in, the local council is the route GOV.UK gives for emergency accommodation. Floodline, on 0345 988 1188 (textphone 0345 602 6340), is the 24-hour line printed on the England flood pages. Use the number published for your own nation if you are outside England.
After the street has drained
Once the path is clear and the floor you need to walk on is dry, the job splits. Switch nothing electrical back on if that socket, that appliance or the consumer unit has been under water. That visit is an electrician. A listing that shows NICEIC or NAPIT is showing a qualification field that is present. It is not a badge this site sells, and it is not a promise about the repair. In England, some new circuits have to be notified under Part P. The Part P note explains that. It does not file the notice for you. Scotland uses its own building standards. Ask the electrician which certificate applies where the house is.
A plumber is the right call when a downstairs loo backed up, a gully on your property blocked, or a non-return valve you already had failed to shut. Say whether the street flooded at the same time. A water company is the right call when the public sewer in the road is what surcharged. Those are two different pipes, and the invoice follows the pipe.
A builder is the right call when the same door takes water every time the pavement ponds: a threshold below the path, a patio that slopes back to the house, or air bricks that sit in a puddle. A new flood door, a raised threshold or a change to the way the ground drains can be building work. The building regulations note is the question of whether the job needs approval. It is not a design for your threshold, and it is not a quote.
Leave the roof out of this call unless you also have water from above. Walking the covering after rain is the mistake the roof pages are written to stop. If the only wet ceiling is the one under a flat roof or a valley, use the roof-leak page and open roofing when the water is still coming in. Gutter water running down the outside face of a wall is the gutter page, from the garden, on a dry day, off a ladder.
Drying out is slow. Lift what you can so air can move, once an electrician has said the sockets are safe to be near. Skip a fan heater on an extension lead in a room that was under water. The plug-in heater page is the socket rules for a dry room on a cold evening. A wet floor and a reel of cable are outside it. If the heating will not restart after a power cut, use the will-not-fire checks only when the boiler cupboard is dry and you cannot smell gas.
What to say when you do ring
On a plumbing call, say whether water came under the door, through an air brick, or up a loo, and whether the street was flooded too. Say if you isolated the stopcock, and that you did so only because the floor was dry. Ask whether the person coming covers drains on private property, and whether the first figure is plus VAT. For a foul backup that is yours rather than the water company’s, start with the plumbing list — for example plumbing in London or plumbing in Manchester — and use the number on the card.
On a building call, say how many times the threshold has let water in, whether the path sits higher than the door, and whether air bricks were under water. Ask what would need building regulations approval before anyone starts raising the threshold. City lists such as building in Bristol are the same idea: you place the call. An electrical call is separate if sockets or the consumer unit were wet. Say which room, and that you have left the power off.
The cost notes are where pounds for a repair are discussed. They are not a price for pumping out today’s flood, and they are not your insurer’s decision. The contact-details page shows how to reach a business yourself. Nobody here forwards the job, and nobody here can tell you the alert has been lifted. That sentence is on the live flood page.
Need a number after the water has gone?
Open the list, pick the city, and contact the business yourself.