North East Lincolnshire Council awarded share of £6.7m for new Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme

North East Lincolnshire Council has been awarded a share of £6.7m to develop innovative solutions to flood and coastal resilience in the community.

The funding is shared with Doncaster Council and a partnership between both councils, Anglian Water and Yorkshire Water has been formed in order to tackle surface water flooding in the urban environment, where there is very little scope for large scale flood storage works.

New alternative solutions are required in the built environment and this project will be trialling a range of sustainable drainage retrofit techniques within the highway and around local schools to help mitigate against flooding, increase flood resilience and to enhance the local environment.

The programme is funded by DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) as part of the £150 million Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme which has been awarded to 25 flood risk management projects. The project will run for six years and will be managed by the Environment Agency.

Councillor Stewart Swinburn, portfolio holder for environment and transport, said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded this funding from DEFRA to help create and deliver a programme where we can reduce the likelihood and consequences of flooding in the area. We will also be working with local schools in the area to provide curriculum approved lessons around the water cycle, sustainability and water management. I look forward to watching this project develop over the coming years.”

Anglian Water will work in partnership with North East Lincolnshire Council and its delivery partner Equans. Jonathan Glerum, Anglian Water’s regional flood risk manager, added: “We are thrilled this funding is coming to North East Lincolnshire. It is the cumulation of a number of years’ hard work with our partners at the council, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the difference this project will make to how we manage flood risk and enhance the environment collaboratively across the council’s area.”

Andy Smith, Equans project lead on the North East Lincolnshire scheme, said: “We are excited to be working on this vital project to help become more resilient to the effects of flooding and climate change within our local area. The lessons we will gather from this six-year programme will be used to help inform future approaches for investment in flood and coastal risk management.”