Lowdham Natural Flood Management Project

• 54 Natural Flood Management features installed
• Attenuation bunds
• Leaky barriers
• Tree planting
• Floodplain reconnection
• De-culverted streams

The Cocker Beck flows through a steep-sided valley before entering the villages of Lambley and Lowdham in Nottinghamshire. Flood risk is three-fold, water breaking through the banks of Cocker Beck, surface water and sewer water, pose a real threat to the community.

As part of the scheme, Trent Rivers Trust delivered an extensive range of Natural Flood Management measures designed to help slow the flow of water within two watercourses and surface pathways to reduce the risk of flooding to the villages of Lambley and Lowdham.

Natural Flood Management requires the support of the whole community and very often the landowners asked to host the interventions are not the ones who suffer flooding. Not all landowners are willing to allow Natural Flood Management on their land or believe that it is an effective solution. We have no power or desire to force initiatives on landowners, so tactful engagement is critical with negotiation that aims to demonstrate it is worthwhile for the landowner to adopt the measures scoped and designed.

As a pilot study, the objective behind this project was to demonstrate the value of Natural Flood Management to the Lowdham community, local authorities and DEFRA. Learning from our engagements with the local community and landowners, we identified a few key learnings.

• Natural Flood Management does work, but only when a community-based approach is adopted. It has a significant impact at a larger scale in a catchment and is not as effective when installed in discrete locations.
• Engagement with the local community is vital, explaining a technique which they may not have come across before and how it can be used to help alleviate flooding, not solve the issue completely.
• We have found that engaging with Parish Councils in Lowdham and Lambley and showing features working via social media is very effective at keeping the community updated and also for managing expectations.
• A local Flood Action Group is a vital facilitator to hosting community discussions and the potential of Natural Flood Management locally.

Trent Rivers Trust continues to deliver more content across the catchment and is working closely with the Parish Councils, Lowdham Flood Action Group, The Environment Agency and Severn Trent Water to develop further opportunities.

Monitoring of the interventions will be undertaken up until March 2023 with the help of Nottingham Trent University, which has assessed the impact of NFM on water levels and sediment levels within the Cocker Beck.