Manchester City Council

Planning and regeneration Strategic Flood Risk Assessment

SFRA details

Flood risk in Manchester, Salford and Trafford is complicated and arises from many potential sources. It is, rightly, a constraint to development and great care is needed over the type and form of new development in flood risk areas. There is an intricate and well connected network of rivers, streams, sewers and canals within Greater Manchester. Flooding does not respect political boundaries and actions to manage flood risk and water from new development need to be carefully considered so that they do not increase risk downstream.

An SFRA is a planning tool that enables a council to select and develop more vulnerable site allocations away from areas susceptible to flooding. The assessment focuses on the emerging site allocations within the Manchester, Salford and Trafford (MST) authorities but also sets out the procedure to be followed when assessing additional sites for development in the future.

The Level 1 SFRA (this volume) provides a spatial assessment of flood risk within key urban areas, which expands on the detail included in the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) sub-regional SFRA. Together these sources will support developing Local Development Frameworks (LDFs) and the production of policies and proposals for development within Manchester, Salford and Trafford.

The key objectives of a SFRA are to:

  • Investigate and identify the extent and severity of flood risk to the area at present and in the future.
  • Contribute to the Council’s Sustainability Appraisal.
  • Enable the Council to apply the Sequential Test and the Exception Test.
  • Provide strategic flood risk guidance and advice to planners and developers.
  • Help local planning authorities to identify specific locations where further and more detailed flood risk data and assessment work is required.
  • Identify the level of detail required for site-specific Flood Risk Assessments (FRAs).
  • Inform the emergency planning process.
  • Improve stakeholder joint working and the sharing of data, information and the understanding of flood risk.
  • Provide a reference document.

Downloads:

As the SFRA documents were produced prior to 2018, they do not meet minimum standards of accessibility criteria. 

If you have any issues accessing these documents, and require further information regarding them, please contact floodriskmanagement@manchester.gov.uk

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