Climate vulnerability · experimental scores
Climate vulnerability in England: Wakefield
Who may be vulnerable to flooding, heat, drought, severe weather and other hazards, how able they are to respond, the places that look after them and the hazards themselves, from each council down to each of its small areas (2021 LSOAs; 215 here, 33,755 in England). England is shown a region at a time.
How the climate risk, exposure, vulnerability and adaptive capacity scores are worked out
Our own experimental scores, not official measures, the same as the Wales dashboard's: hazards and exposure (what is here), vulnerability (who lives here) and adaptive capacity (how able they are to respond). Each compares Yorkshire and The Humber's 3,355 small areas with each other (England is built a region at a time), so 80 means more than about 80% of the region's small areas, and a figure in one region is not comparable with the same figure in another.
- Each measure becomes a percentile within the region: 0 for the lowest small area, 100 for the highest. Every Indices of Deprivation measure used is a score (higher is more deprived). For a hazard, an area with none scores 0 and the areas with some are ranked from just above 0 to 100.
- Each score is the weighted average of its measures' percentiles. A measure not held for an area is left out, never counted as zero; an area needs enough of them (shown below) to have a score.
- Climate risk: exposure, vulnerability and low adaptive capacity together: the cube root of the three multiplied (their geometric mean), so an area scores high only when all three are high. A council's figure is the average of its small areas'.
- Scenarios change exposure, and so climate risk: Now (2001-2020 climate, present flood risk); 2°C of global warming (around the 2050s; flood risk: the Environment Agency's 2050s map); 4°C of global warming (late century, high emissions; flood risk: the 2050s map, the latest the Agency maps). Heat is the days over 30°C for each; summer drying counts only with warming. Flood: now, the Environment Agency's homes at high or medium risk from rivers or the sea today; with warming, the share of the area's postcodes inside its 2050s climate change map at high or medium risk, read from FloodRadar's copy (each postcode's centre asked once). The Agency publishes that one climate change map, for the 2050s, and none for late in the century or for 4°C, so 4°C reads the 2050s map too: the latest the Agency maps, which likely understates flooding by then. Here the 2050s flood shares for Yorkshire and The Humber are still being worked out by the nightly job, so until then 2°C and 4°C read today's flood map as "Now" does. Today's figure is a share of homes and the 2050s one a share of postcodes, so they are not compared directly; each scenario ranks the region's small areas on its own.
Vulnerability
Who lives here: how many people may find heat, flooding or other hazards hard to cope with. At least 6 measures needed.
| Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| IoD 2025 overall deprivation (IMD score) | 1 |
| IoD 2025 health deprivation and disability (score) | 1 |
| Aged 75 and over | 1 |
| One-person households aged 66 and over | 1 |
| Bad or very bad health | 1 |
| Disabled under the Equality Act | 1 |
| Households deprived in 3 or more dimensions | 1 |
| Cannot speak English well or at all | 1 |
Exposure
What is here: the hazards mapped in or around the small area, under the chosen scenario. An area with none of a hazard scores 0 for it; the areas with some are ranked from just above 0 to 100. At least 3 measures needed.
| Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| Flooding from rivers or the sea, with defences, at high or medium risk: now, the Environment Agency's homes at risk as a share of the area's homes (Properties and Postcodes in Areas at Risk); at 2°C and 4°C, the share of the area's postcodes inside the Agency's 2050s climate change map at high or medium risk (Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea, Climate Change, as kept by FloodRadar), the only climate change flood map it publishes | 2 |
| Storm overflow spills in the area, 2025 (water companies' returns, as kept by FloodRadar) | 1 |
| Days over 30°C a year for the area's neighbourhood: 2001-2020, or with 2°C or 4°C of warming (Met Office UKCP18) | 1 |
| Background NO2 at the area's centre (Defra's modelled 1 km grid) | 0.5 |
| Drought now: the shortfall of the last 6 months' rainfall below the 1991-2020 normal for the council, from its rain gauges or else its Met Office area (FloodRadar); 0 at or above normal | 1 |
| Met Office severe weather warnings over the council since FloodRadar began keeping them (27 September 2026), yellow 1, amber 2, red 3 | 1 |
| Summer drying: the fall in summer rainfall for the area's neighbourhood with 2°C or 4°C of warming (Met Office UKCP18; not counted now) | 1 |
Low adaptive capacity
How hard it would be to respond, cope and recover: distance to help, car access and income. Higher means less able to adapt. At least 4 measures needed.
| Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| Minutes to the nearest GP by bus or train at 7am, one way (UBDC AI23) | 1 |
| Minutes to the nearest pharmacy by bus or train at 7am | 1 |
| Minutes to the nearest supermarket by bus or train at 7am | 1 |
| Households without a car or van | 1 |
| IoD 2025 income deprivation (share of residents) | 1 |
| IoD 2025 geographical barriers to services (score: road distance to a GP, food shop, school and post office) | 1 |
Limits: equal weights are a choice, not evidence; health, disability and deprivation move together, so that pattern counts more than once; flood shares are the Environment Agency's homes at high or medium risk from rivers or the sea, with defences, over all the homes it lists in the area (postcodes with too few properties to list alone share their group's homes); surface water is not included (the Agency's national map needs a Data Services Platform account); England has no public coal tip register, so there is no coal tip measure; road noise is not included (Defra's map is read a point at a time); overflows count what lies inside the small area, not near it; heat and summer rainfall are the Met Office's figures for the area's neighbourhood (MSOA); NO2 is the nearest 1 km cell to the area's centre; severe weather counts Met Office warnings since FloodRadar began keeping them (2026-09-27); drought now is each council's rainfall shortfall against normal (FloodRadar), by its gauges or else its Met Office area. Travel minutes are UBDC's 2023 figures on 2011 small areas: a 2021 area made by merging two has none (never averaged). The weights live in data/reference/climate-england-index.json.
Map
Darker is more vulnerable or more exposed on every measure (for an IoD rank, a lower rank). Measures marked by the scenario follow it. Click a small area for its figures. Overflows sized by their spills in 2025; care homes by their beds.
Scores by council i
| Council | Climate risk now | at 2°C | at 4°C | Exposure (now) | Vulnerability | Low adaptive capacity | Small areas with climate risk 75+ (now) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield | 49.3 | 49.7 | 48.5 | 44.6 | 55.6 | 52.1 | 0 |
Each council's figure is the mean of its small areas' (percentiles within Yorkshire and The Humber). How they are worked out.
People who may be vulnerable
| Council | Residents | Small areas | In England's most deprived 10% / 20% | Aged 75 and over | One-person households aged 66 and over | Households without a car or van | Disabled under the Equality Act | Bad or very bad health | Provide unpaid care | Cannot speak English well or at all | Households deprived in 3 or more dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield | 353,370 | 215 | 37 / 72 | 8.4% | 13.0% | 22.8% | 20.1% | 6.5% | 9.5% | 1.3% | 4.9% |
Census 2021 (ONS; age 75 and over, people aged 66 and over living alone, no car, bad health and English from the census tables we keep, disability, unpaid care and deprivation from Nomis; small areas added up; the denominators are each table's own: residents, households, residents aged 5+ for carers, aged 3+ for English). English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (MHCLG, File 7): 33,755 small areas, the most deprived 10% in decile 1.
Health, care and access
| Council | GP practices (patients) | Care homes (beds; with nursing) | Pharmacies | Hospitals with an A&E | Fuel poverty | Extra deaths in winter (2014/15 to 2018/19) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield | 33 (369,483) | 96 (2,964; 18) | 59 | 1 | 10.8% (2024) | 22.8% |
GP practices: NHS ODS (our copy), placed by their postcode, with registered patients (QOF list sizes). Care homes: CQC's care directory, 2 November 2026, as our hospitals job keeps it (registered care homes, not dormant, placed by their postcode). Pharmacies: OpenStreetMap. Hospitals with an A&E: our own table (CQC, NHS England). Fuel poverty (DESNZ, low income low energy efficiency) and extra deaths in winter (ONS winter mortality index, our own average of the five winters before the pandemic): council figures we already hold. Travel minutes to a GP, pharmacy, supermarket and hospital, by small area, are on the map.
Hazards
| Council | Homes at high or medium flood risk (rivers or sea) | Postcodes at high or medium risk in the 2050s | River / rain gauges | Flood warnings / alerts since 2006 | Storm overflows | Spills 2025 (hours) | Spills 2024 | Days over 30°C a year: now → 2°C → 4°C | Severe weather warnings (amber or red) | Drought now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield | 1,799 | – | 18 / 3 | 93 / 196 | 110 | 2,724 (14,904) | 3,212 | 2 → 3.3 → 15.4 | 4 (0) | 70% of normal (2 gauges) |
Homes at flood risk: the Environment Agency's Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea, Postcodes in Areas at Risk (2026-06-12), residential properties at high or medium risk with defences, summed over the council's small areas (our copy, loaded weekly; no FloodRadar query). In the 2050s: the share of the council's postcodes whose centre lies inside the Environment Agency's Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea, Climate Change (2050s) map at high or medium risk with defences, of those whose answer is known (a postcode where the Agency publishes "Unavailable", or one FloodRadar's copy could not answer, is not known, never "no risk"; "–" when fewer than half are known or the region's shares are not yet worked out); postcodes stand in for homes. Flood risk in the 2050s: Environment Agency Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea — Climate Change (2050s), with defences, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2025, Open Government Licence v3.0; read from FloodRadar's copy of the map. Gauges, flood warnings and overflows: FloodRadar's own copy of the Environment Agency's gauges and flood warning history (each warning area placed in its council by its point) and the water companies' storm overflow returns (a year without monitoring is left out, never 0); read 2026-11-06. Severe weather: Met Office Weather Warnings © Crown Copyright, as kept by FloodRadar. Every Met Office warning since 2026-09-27, counted in each council it named, by the council's own name, its county or its metropolitan county ("Not available": a name the Met Office has not used in a warning held). Drought now: rainfall over the last 6 months against the 1991-2020 normal, from FloodRadar's drought feed: the median of the council's rain gauges with every month complete where it has two or more, else its Met Office area; Rainfall: Met Office HadUK-Grid areal series (monthly) and its 1991–2020 averages. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Heat: Met Office UKCP18 by neighbourhood (our council figures' copy of the Climate Data Portal; medians; 2001-2020, then 2°C and 4°C of global warming above pre-industrial), the mean of the council's small areas.
Critical infrastructure
Not shown for England yet: there is no single open source of substations. National Grid Electricity Distribution (the Midlands and the South West, read for Wales with the owner's token) and UK Power Networks (London, the South East and the East, open data) each publish their own; Northern Powergrid, Electricity North West and SSEN cover the rest. Hospitals with an A&E are above and on the map.
The 20 small areas at most climate risk, now (2001-2020 climate, present flood risk) i
| Small area | Council | Climate risk | Exposure | Vulnerability | Low adaptive capacity | IMD rank | Aged 75+ | Bad health | No car | Minutes to a GP | Homes at flood risk | Postcodes at flood risk, 2050s | Overflow spills 2025 | Days over 30°C | NO2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield 016C E01011815 | Wakefield | 70.7 | 61.0 | 76.8 | 75.3 | 4,319 | 10.4% | 8.6% | 21.1% | 21 | 6.1% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 10.5 |
| Wakefield 004E E01011764 | Wakefield | 70.3 | 63.8 | 78.9 | 68.9 | 2,663 | 9.9% | 8.9% | 36.8% | 19 | 4.2% | – | 16 | 2.0 | 11.0 |
| Wakefield 027B E01011780 | Wakefield | 69.9 | 65.7 | 88.4 | 58.8 | 451 | 8.3% | 12.3% | 45.0% | 16 | 6.8% | – | 25 | 2.0 | 7.9 |
| Wakefield 039D E01011792 | Wakefield | 68.1 | 51.6 | 84.2 | 72.7 | 186 | 7.5% | 13.4% | 39.7% | 29 | 1.9% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 7.5 |
| Wakefield 039C E01011791 | Wakefield | 67.8 | 49.5 | 79.6 | 79.1 | 3,291 | 9.2% | 11.8% | 24.8% | 35 | 1.4% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 7.3 |
| Wakefield 043A E01011859 | Wakefield | 67.2 | 59.9 | 88.3 | 57.3 | 2,733 | 14.7% | 11.9% | 37.9% | 15 | 4.5% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 11.1 |
| Wakefield 040A E01011771 | Wakefield | 66.4 | 48.9 | 81.9 | 73.0 | 2,353 | 10.6% | 12.3% | 26.6% | 36 | 1.3% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 7.1 |
| Wakefield 004B E01011759 | Wakefield | 65.2 | 56.4 | 72.2 | 68.1 | 5,015 | 6.6% | 9.3% | 30.8% | 18 | 2.7% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 10.4 |
| Wakefield 028A E01011902 | Wakefield | 65.1 | 71.0 | 64.3 | 60.5 | 13,317 | 13.6% | 5.9% | 22.9% | 21 | 24.1% | – | 0 | 3.0 | 11.0 |
| Wakefield 030D E01011917 | Wakefield | 64.8 | 76.9 | 60.2 | 58.7 | 1,489 | 3.4% | 6.4% | 45.5% | 14 | 8.6% | – | 47 | 3.0 | 11.0 |
| Wakefield 011C E01011806 | Wakefield | 63.3 | 71.5 | 57.3 | 61.9 | 7,996 | 8.9% | 7.0% | 18.3% | 30 | 16.8% | – | 24 | 2.0 | 10.3 |
| Wakefield 022F E01011927 | Wakefield | 62.9 | 58.3 | 75.6 | 56.5 | 6,249 | 8.9% | 8.4% | 31.6% | 13 | 0.9% | – | 37 | 2.0 | 11.5 |
| Wakefield 040C E01011784 | Wakefield | 61.6 | 43.0 | 69.8 | 78.0 | 6,751 | 9.7% | 9.7% | 18.4% | 30 | 0.4% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 7.1 |
| Wakefield 011E E01011811 | Wakefield | 61.6 | 38.6 | 74.4 | 81.5 | 447 | 5.9% | 7.8% | 39.8% | 25 | 0.0% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 9.7 |
| Wakefield 030B E01011906 | Wakefield | 61.1 | 49.0 | 71.0 | 65.6 | 1,277 | 4.1% | 9.2% | 42.4% | 10 | 0.0% | – | 27 | 3.0 | 9.5 |
| Wakefield 024C E01011777 | Wakefield | 60.4 | 42.5 | 73.6 | 70.6 | 8,617 | 13.9% | 9.8% | 18.9% | 22 | 0.0% | – | 16 | 2.0 | 9.3 |
| Wakefield 009D E01011883 | Wakefield | 60.3 | 59.0 | 63.6 | 58.3 | 14,717 | 9.6% | 6.8% | 22.0% | 13 | 0.3% | – | 86 | 2.0 | 13.3 |
| Wakefield 011D E01011809 | Wakefield | 60.2 | 39.3 | 79.4 | 69.9 | 5,296 | 11.5% | 9.8% | 32.1% | 21 | 0.0% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 10.6 |
| Wakefield 016D E01011816 | Wakefield | 59.7 | 38.2 | 77.2 | 72.1 | 3,276 | 6.9% | 10.0% | 32.6% | 14 | 0.0% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 9.3 |
| Wakefield 026F E01011922 | Wakefield | 59.6 | 40.1 | 81.2 | 64.9 | 1,192 | 8.3% | 10.2% | 37.6% | 13 | 0.0% | – | 0 | 2.0 | 11.7 |
MHCLG English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (File 7); ONS Census 2021 (Nomis); ONS boundaries (Open Geography Portal); Environment Agency Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea, Properties and Postcodes in Areas at Risk (OGL v3, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2025; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right); FloodRadar's copy of the Environment Agency's gauges, flood warning history and the water companies' storm overflow returns; Met Office UKCP18 local projections (Climate Data Portal); Defra background NO2 (PCM); UBDC Accessibility Indicators 2023 (OGL); NHS ODS GP practices and patients; CQC care directory; OpenStreetMap pharmacies (ODbL). Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Flood risk in the 2050s: Environment Agency Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea — Climate Change (2050s), with defences, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2025, Open Government Licence v3.0; read from FloodRadar's copy of the map. Met Office Weather Warnings © Crown Copyright, as kept by FloodRadar. Built 2026-11-07T23:26 UTC in 6.6 s; each source kept as long as it lasts (a year for the census and boundaries, a month for the flood shares and care homes, a day for the region's dashboard, rebuilt each night). The Wales dashboard: /climate/wales.