Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, West Cumbria Rivers Trust, Trent Rivers Trust, Thames21, Wyre Rivers Trust and the Wandle Trust are amongst the winning community organisations of the £1 million government funding for Natural Flood Management (NFM) schemes across England. The £1million fund was part of the £15million funding announced by Defra following the 2016 Autumn Statement and was set aside for an ‘open competition’ for community projects in March 2017. 34 projects were successful in the completion, five of which are Rivers Trust organisations. The projects will provide an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of Natural Flood Management, add to our evidence base, and help to develop innovative solutions for the future by:

reducing flood risk, or coastal erosion risk, to homes
improving habitats and increasing biodiversity
contributing to research and developing NFM techniques and interventions
supporting and developing partnership working with and between communities

The projects were evaluated by a national panel made up of representatives from the Regional Flood Committee, Environment Agency, Natural England, Forestry Commission and Defra and were evaluated in three stages. David Johnson, Director of River Ecosystem Services at The Rivers Trust, said:

“We are delighted to see that five of our Rivers Trusts have won this funding. Natural Flood Management is crucial to the health of our rivers and we recently produced a modelling study which showed that appropriately located NFM could make a significant difference to flood flows. It will be very exciting to see some of these techniques put into practice.”

The winning organisations have been published on the Catchment Based Approach website, here.