22 Wheatfields, Stambridge, Essex, SS4 2BT Data via plota.co.uk

The Environment Agency flood map for planning. Councils use it to decide when a flood risk assessment and the sequential test are needed. It is indicative and does not show whether a particular property will flood.

Where development of farmland is needed, policy prefers poorer land over the best and most versatile (grades 1, 2 and 3a). Three sources: Natural England's post-1988 field surveys, which are definitive where they exist; the Defra predictive map for England (2025) and the Welsh Government predictive map, modelled from the soil map with 3a and 3b split; and the 1970s provisional map, which planners and other services still show, coarser and with grade 3 undivided. Where the provisional and predicted grades disagree, treat the predicted grade as the current estimate and expect an application to carry its own survey.