How to make a flood kit (and a household flood plan in 15 minutes)

A flood kit is a bag of essentials you can grab in under a minute if you need to leave your home — or move upstairs — in a hurry. You don't need special equipment or a survivalist mindset. Most of what belongs in it is already in your house; the job is simply to put it in one place before you need it.

This guide covers what goes in the bag, where to keep it, the digital preparation that's just as important, and how to write a simple household flood plan in about a quarter of an hour.

What goes in a flood kit

Think of it in four layers: things that prove who you are, things that keep you safe and informed, things that keep you comfortable, and things specific to the people (and animals) in your household.

Documents and money

• Copies of key documents — insurance policy (with the policy number visible), passports or ID, tenancy agreement or mortgage details, and a list of emergency contacts. Keep them in a sealed waterproof bag or folder.
• Some cash — card machines and ATMs can go down in a power cut.
• Spare keys — house and car.

Safety and communication

• A torch — head torches are ideal because they leave your hands free. Pack spare batteries, and avoid relying on candles during a flood.
• A charged power bank and charging cables for your phones. Recharge the power bank every couple of months.
• A battery or wind-up radio — local radio carries emergency updates if the mobile network is congested or down.
• A basic first-aid kit.

Health and comfort

• Medicines — at least a few days' supply of any prescription medication, plus a written list of what each household member takes. Repeat prescriptions are hard to sort quickly during an evacuation.
• Bottled water and long-life snacks — enough to get you through several hours away from home.
• Warm, waterproof clothing — floods usually come with cold, wet weather. A spare set of clothes per person, and sturdy footwear such as wellingtons.
• Glasses, hearing-aid batteries and anything else a household member depends on daily.

Children and pets

• For babies and young children: nappies, formula or food, a comfort toy, and a spare change of clothes.
• For pets: a lead or carrier, a few days of food, and any medication. Note down a pet-friendly place you could stay — not all rest centres accept animals.

Where to keep it

The kit should live somewhere you pass on the way out of the house — a hallway cupboard, under the stairs, or the top of a wardrobe upstairs if your ground floor is the flood risk. The test is simple: could a half-asleep member of your household find it in the dark?

Avoid the garage, the cellar or an outbuilding. Those are often the first places to flood, and you don't want to wade to reach your grab bag.

Digital prep: the part most people skip

A surprising amount of flood preparation now lives on your phone, and it costs nothing but ten minutes.

• Photograph your documents. Take clear photos of your insurance schedule, ID and any medical documents, and store them somewhere you can reach from any device — cloud storage or email them to yourself.
• Save your insurer's emergency claim line as a contact in your phone, along with your policy number in the notes field.
• Photograph each room of your home now, while it's dry. If you ever need to claim, before-and-after photos make the process far smoother.
• Sign up for official flood warnings. In England you can register for free flood warnings by phone, text or email at gov.uk; Scotland has SEPA's Floodline and Wales has Natural Resources Wales equivalents.
• Add a live-monitoring layer. Alongside the official service, you can watch live river levels near you on FloodRadar and set alerts on the gauges that matter to you, so you see conditions building rather than only hearing when a warning is issued.

A household flood plan in 15 minutes

A flood plan is just agreed answers to a handful of questions, written down where everyone can find them. The Environment Agency publishes a personal flood plan template on gov.uk that you can fill in, but the core of it fits on one page:

1. How will we know? Who in the household receives flood warnings, and how do they tell everyone else? Make sure at least two people are signed up.
2. What do the warnings mean? Agree in advance: a flood alert means be prepared; a flood warning means act now; a severe flood warning means danger to life. A Met Office rain warning is a forecast of heavy rain, not a flood warning — but it's your earliest cue to check the next 24 hours and the kit.
3. What moves first? List the five to ten things you'd carry upstairs or to safety: people and pets first, then medicines, documents, sentimental items, and portable valuables. Decide the order now, not mid-flood.
4. Where are the shut-offs? Note where to turn off electricity, gas and water — and check everyone able to do it knows how. Never touch electrical switches if you're standing in water.
5. Where would we go? A friend or relative on higher ground, and a backup. Include how you'd get there if roads flood, and where you'd meet if separated.
6. Who's vulnerable? Note any neighbours who might need a knock on the door — older people, anyone with mobility difficulties, households with babies.

Print it, stick a copy inside the flood-kit bag, and revisit it once a year — a good prompt is when the clocks change, alongside checking the torch batteries and medicine dates.

Do you actually need one?

If your home is near a river, on low-lying ground, or in an area with a history of surface water flooding, a kit is an obvious precaution — you can look up your address on the government's long-term flood risk checker and see where floods have been recorded historically on FloodRadar.

But flooding isn't only a riverside problem. Surface water flooding can affect streets with no watercourse in sight, and a burst main or blocked drain can flood a home anywhere. Based on public risk mapping, millions of UK properties have some level of flood risk — and the kit doubles as a general emergency bag for power cuts, storms and evacuations of any kind. It's a small effort with no downside.