Thames Valley Flood Scheme will not progress

CLA South East rural surveyor Rosie Salt-Crockford updates members on the Thames Valley Flood Scheme...

As some members will already be aware, in May 2023, the CLA was invited to engage with the Environment Agency over the ‘Thames Valley Flood Scheme’.

The scheme, which was described as “a large-scale project looking to reduce flood risk across the Thames Valley”, started off looking at over 700 potential sites for large scale water storage alongside smaller projects such as some natural flood management schemes.

These sites were located on catchments throughout the Thames Valley, which if progressed with, would help to reduce flood risk in places along the river Thames.

A couple of meetings occurred in 2023, where we were informed that the 700+ sites being assessed and reviewed had been narrowed down to 17 possible locations.

At a meeting with the EA and various local councils/catchment partnerships/cluster group representatives and other industry bodies, some local knowledge around these 17 locations was shared with the EA. This ensured that they were informed of what was already happening or due to happen on the ground by both landowners doing natural flood management or by councils looking to reduce the impact of flooding on their residents.

In addition to this, there was also a workshop to help the EA decide how best to engage with the public and potentially affected landowners on this project and who to contact and when.

The EA was keen to caveat, even at these early meetings, that the project may not progress further as it needed to make economic sense when put through a cost benefit analysis. It was noted that the projected forecasts for the scheme were at that time coming out much higher than when the scheme was first being considered and costed out a few years previously.

After this last meeting, we didn’t hear from the EA for a little while as they were busy evaluating the remaining sites using various metrics and ensuring that funding was in place to allow the project to continue.

Fast forward to May 2024 and we were again invited to a stakeholder meeting with the EA where we learned that the 17 sites had now been whittled down to either a small number or no sites being taken forward, and that it would be useful if the stakeholders could provide feedback on draft letters and newsletters which explained the project’s progress thus far.

In October a further workshop was held to give feedback on the next set of draft communications, but then in early November, we were informed that the project would not be progressing further.

While some smaller flood mitigation work may still continue in certain areas, on the whole, the project was no longer deemed viable at this time.

We hope this provides a useful update to any members who may have received a letter from the EA regarding this scheme previously. If you have any further questions or concerns then please do contact me.