£16 million Teesside flood scheme complete

The Environment Agency has completed a vital new Teesside flood scheme which benefits local residents and businesses and provides a significant boost to local wildlife.

• New £16 million scheme better protects 350 homes and 32 businesses
• Almost 50 hectares of new habitat created for local wildlife
• Designed to last 50 years taking climate change into account

Costing almost £16million, the Port Clarence and Greatham South project has increased flood protection to Port Clarence residents from the River Tees and Greatham Creek while also creating new habitat the size of over 90 football pitches for local wildlife.

The Environment Agency joined forces with local industry to build the scheme with multinational company SABIC UK contributing some of the funding and INOVYN ChlorVinyls offering land to allow the creation of the new habitat.

Throughout the project the Environment Agency has worked closely with the RSPB and Natural England to create a scheme which maximises benefits for the internationally designated habitat which includes rare birds as well as seals. The new habitats also feature both a brand new bird hide and seal hide to give nature-lovers a close-up view of these stunning local species.

Combined with flood defences that were completed at Port Clarence in 2015, the project reduces the risk of flooding to 350 homes and 32 businesses in Port Clarence and the Seal Sands Industrial Complex. Click here to read more 

Natural Flood Management Project – Progress at Halvergate

It is 18 months since the government announced a £15million Natural Flood Management (NFM) programme split between smaller community led projects and catchment wide schemes. Floods Minister, Thérèse Coffey recently visited the construction site of one scheme in Suffolk.

The project at Halvergate Island off the coast of Suffolk received funding from the £1.8 million awarded to 34 community-led initiatives as part of a government funded competition.

Work is currently underway to lower a 650 metre section of the seawall surrounding the island by nearly half a metre and will enable the RSPB to safeguard the unique Suffolk Coast nature reserve’s habitats against the impact of increasingly frequent storm surges predicted as a result of climate change.

Visiting the island nature reserve in her Suffolk Coastal constituency last week, Floods Minister and Suffolk Coastal MP, Thérèse Coffey said: This project to protect Halvergate Island is a fine example of Natural Flood Management (NFM) and I’m delighted to see for myself how the works are progressing. Flood defence technology and engineering is improving all the time and the project shows how by using a mix of natural and concrete defences, we can provide the best flood protection for individual areas.

Suffolk is just one of the areas across England benefitting from our £15m investment in NFM and in the record £2.6billion we are investing overall to better protect against flooding. The first of its kind competition launched in March 2017 brought forward innovative plans to use landscape features such as ponds, banks, meanders, channels, and trees to store, drain or slow flood water. 

NFM project. The remaining £13.2 million was allocated to 26 catchment scale projects to develop larger scale projects which will benefit wider areas; with Cumbria, Greater Manchester Merseyside and Cheshire and Wolsingham all receiving over £1m of funding. The Weardale project, led by the Environment Agency, has £2.1m to install natural features across 100km² area using a range of techniques including peatland restoration. Early in 2019 work will begin in the Monksilver and Doniford Catchments, found in South West England. The project is again led by the Environment Agency and has £400,000 to implement a wide range of features including leaky woody structures, floodplain reconnection, tree planting and peatland restoration.