UK Climate Rankings
These 20 local authority areas have the highest number of postcodes within mapped coastal erosion risk areas, based on NCERM (England and Wales) and NatureScot (Scotland) data.
This list ranks the 20 UK local authorities with the highest number of postcodes within mapped coastal erosion risk areas. Data comes from the National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM) for England and Wales, maintained by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales, and from NatureScot's coastal change data for Scotland. Northern Ireland coastal erosion data is not yet integrated into the LocalRisk dataset.
Coastal flooding is short-term inundation of low-lying land during high tides, storm surges, or extreme weather. Coastal erosion is the gradual retreat of the shoreline over years and decades as cliffs, dunes, and beaches lose material to waves and weathering. The two affect different stretches of coast and require different defensive responses. A property at the back of a stable dune system can face high flood risk but low erosion risk; a property on a cliff edge above a non-flooding beach can face high erosion risk but low flood risk.
NCERM projects shoreline change over three time horizons: short-term (to 2025), medium-term (to 2055), and long-term (to 2105). For each stretch of coast it assesses likely retreat under three management scenarios: "no active intervention", "hold the line" (current defences maintained), and "managed realignment". This ranking uses the medium-term hold-the-line assessment as the baseline because it reflects current policy in most of the affected councils. Properties in zones flagged for medium-term retreat under hold-the-line conditions sit in postcodes likely to lose land to the sea within most current homeowners' tenure.
The most exposed UK coastlines are the soft-rock cliffs of Yorkshire's Holderness coast, the East Anglian and Suffolk coasts, parts of the Sussex coast, and the eroding cliffs and dunes of the Welsh and west-of-Scotland coastlines. Hard-rock coastlines (Cornwall, north Devon, much of the Pembrokeshire coast, the Scottish Highlands and Hebridean cliffs) retreat much more slowly because granite, limestone, and metamorphic rocks resist wave action far better than the soft Holocene-age deposits of the eastern English coast.
This list covers shoreline erosion only. It does not include coastal flood risk, which is captured in the main flood ranking. It does not include sea-level rise projections beyond NCERM's modelling horizons. For an address-specific picture combining erosion risk, flood risk, and other climate hazards, use the LocalRisk postcode lookup. For deeper investigation of specific properties on at-risk coastlines, the Environment Agency's Coastal Erosion service and the local Shoreline Management Plan published by each Coastal Group are the authoritative references.
NCERM is the National Coastal Erosion Risk Map for England and Wales, maintained by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales. It projects shoreline change over short-term (to 2025), medium-term (to 2055), and long-term (to 2105) horizons under three management scenarios: no active intervention, hold the line, and managed realignment. The full dataset is published under Open Government Licence.
Coastal flooding is short-term inundation during high tides, storm surges, or extreme weather. Coastal erosion is gradual retreat of the shoreline over years and decades as cliffs, dunes, and beaches lose material to waves and weathering. The two affect different stretches of coast and require different defensive responses. A property can face one without the other.
The ranking uses the medium-term (to 2055) hold-the-line scenario, which assumes current defences are maintained. Managed-realignment areas (where the policy is to deliberately allow the coast to retreat rather than defending it) typically show higher erosion in NCERM modelling and may shift council positions if you query the dataset under the managed-realignment scenario instead. The choice of scenario is a policy assumption, not a forecast.
Northern Ireland coastal erosion data is not yet integrated into the LocalRisk dataset. The Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland publishes coastal information but does not currently provide a property-level erosion-risk dataset compatible with the postcode-level methodology used for England, Wales, and Scotland. We will add Northern Ireland coverage when a compatible dataset becomes available.
For any property within 1km of the coast, check three things: NCERM's medium-term hold-the-line classification for the specific stretch of coast (England and Wales) or NatureScot's coastal change data (Scotland); the published Shoreline Management Plan for the local Coastal Group, which sets policy for the next several decades; and the Environment Agency's coastal flood risk for the same postcode. The LocalRisk postcode page combines erosion and flood data in one screen.