Future Fens flood risk management
Fens flood risk management baseline report now available.
From:
11 May 2021
Phase 1 of the flood risk management work started 3 years ago, to develop a shared understanding of the flood risk challenges in the Great Ouse Fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.
Future activity will build on this baselining work to develop flood management options that can deliver flood and drainage infrastructure needed for future generations.
This work is delivering on key commitments to the Fens as featured in the National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy (FCERM) published in 2020.
With a third of the Fens currently below sea level, the area has a network of flood protection assets that are owned and managed by different organisations. Much of this infrastructure is nearing the end of its design life and will soon need significant investment. With the increasing effects of climate change, flood infrastructure is key in providing water resourc
The River Cam prior to water shortages. Picture: Phoebe Taplin
- Credit: Phoebe Taplin
The MP for South Cambridgeshire has welcomed the creation of the government’s Chalk Streams Working Group, to tackle the continued over-abstraction and water shortage problems faced in the county.
It is part of a range of measures and initiatives that Anthony Browne has been pushing for to help save the county’s threatened chalk streams.
Anthony Browne - South Cambs MP. Picture: Stephen Frost
- Credit: Stephen Frost
Working with Water Resources East and the Cam Valley Forum, Mr Browne has campaigned to raise concerns about local chalk streams, which produce incredibly clear flows from stores of underground water that are normally replenished when it rains.
Mr Harris sought a legal opinion from Stephen Tromans QC, one of the country s leading environmental lawyers, which he has sent to EA chief executive Sir James Bevan.
It says the EA has a legal duty to take appropriate steps to avoid damaging European sites, not to wait to for evidence to be presented to it of damage having taken place , and that it is already fully aware that abstraction is threatening wider areas .
Mr Tromans concludes the current Restoring Sustainable Abstraction (RSA) exercise, as it only assesses three of the many SSSIs (sites of special scientific interest) which underpin protected designations across the Broads, is currently limited in ways which cannot be legally justified .