Irwell Vale, Chatterton and Strongstry Community Engagement - July 2020

Overview

Project update / Flood Scheme update

As you will be aware, we are working under unprecedented circumstances during this Coronavirus Pandemic. Our key priorities are to protect the health, safety and well-being of our own staff, the public and the businesses and partners we work with; and to prevent loss of life and serious harm to the environment. For this reason, we are not consulting/engaging face-to-face until it is safe, but instead have included all the information we wanted to share in this Engagement Pack.

Following the issue of our May Newsletter, the project team has worked hard to keep this project moving in the right direction. In this update, we will share our progress to date, our proposed programme and provide answers to some Frequently Asked Questions.

When we last updated you, we were working with our consultant Jacobs to refine our hydraulic model. This was undertaken to ensure that our hydraulic model best represents the existing situation, so that when we model options to remove flood risk, we can realistically understand the impact of these options. We also presented the long list of options that were investigated and how we had narrowed this down to three short-listed options.

We are pleased to say that the model refinement exercise was completed at the beginning of June, and currently, we are modelling our three short-listed options (primarily comprising linear defences). The outputs of the model refinement exercise are presented in the Engagement Pack see 'Updated Present Day Flood Risk Maps' section.

Once the options modelling is completed, we will use the outputs to undertake an economic analysis as part of the standard options appraisal process. This analysis will determine the most economically favourable option which is likely to attract the most funding.

The Government has recently changed the way Flood Risk Management projects calculate their funding eligibility. This is good news for this project as it will undoubtedly reduce the funding gap we originally envisaged because it results in an increase in Government Grant in Aid contribution towards total project costs. We hope to share more definitive & quantitative information about the economic analysis in the coming months.           

We have also shared our proposed programme inside this Engagement Pack see 'Proposed Programme' section. This programme assumes that a fully fundable solution exists. However, due to the numbers of households at risk (approximately 116) in comparison with the vast amount of water that requires managing (1.7 million m³ required managing in Storm Desmond), we do envisage there will remain a funding shortfall. We are currently making our best efforts to source this additional funding.         

Our partners have also been progressing with alleviating non-main river flood risk. Lancashire County Council (LCC) has completed a CCTV survey investigation at Strongstry and have also engaged consultant Jacobs to produce a model of flow paths and surface water flood risk. This will enable suitable mitigation options to be considered alongside those for the Main River flood risk.

LCC are also now in a position to progress the CCTV surveys in Irwell Vale. The information from these surveys and investigations will inform the council of the capacity and connectivity of surface water systems so that surface water flood risk can be managed appropriately alongside that of the Main River.

We ask that you review the full Engagement Pack and then the Frequently Asked Questions document and then use the online survey in the 'Give us your views' section to provide any feedback or comments you wish to make.  It is important that we hear from you during projects like this to ensure we understand what this project means for you and the community.