￡200m Flood and Coastal Innovation Programmes: what we’ve achieved so far

Author: Julie Foley, Director of?Flood Risk Strategy?and Adaptation, Environment Agency

Climate change means we need to shift gears, to ensure we adapt and become more resilient to future flooding and storm surges. We need to get better at outthinking climate change.

This means being more open minded about doing things differently in flood and coastal risk management. We cannot simply rely on building higher and higher walls and taking traditional approaches to keeping our places protected from flooding and coastal erosion. I have seen the devastating impacts flooding can have on peoples’ homes and livelihoods and the long lasting impacts on mental health and wellbeing.

In the face of a changing climate, we need to help communities be more resilient to flooding and coastal change, so that when it does happen it causes much less harm to people, does much less damage, and ensures life can get back to normal much quicker.

Carving out the space for innovation is challenging. The demands on flood risk management authorities to perform statutory duties, develop projects and manage tight budgets, means there is often little room to try new things.

In 2021, I had the privilege of leading the team at the Environment Agency who developed the ￡200m flood and coastal innovation programmes – the largest of their kind for the flood and coastal sector. The programmes play a crucial role in helping achieve the ambitions in the national Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Strategy and its vision for a nation more ?resilient to flooding and coastal change today, tomorrow and to the year 2100.

The innovation programmes are made up of 35 local innovation projects around the country that are testing and developing practical ways of bolstering resilience to flooding and coastal change. The projects are also supporting communities at risk of coastal erosion to transition and adapt to a changing coastline. And whilst enhancing flood resilience is the key goal, they are unlocking wider benefits for local communities and wildlife. This includes supporting nature recovery, carbon reduction and improvements in water quality whilst also enhancing the local tourist economy and supporting local economic regeneration.

I have met many of the project teams over the last few years. What always strikes me is the energy and optimism they share, which is truly infectious. It’s proven to me that when you give local partners the space to innovate, they thrive.

I have been blown away by the ideas from the project teams. Whether that’s the development of new AI-led flood warning systems for isolated rural communities in Northumberland, or repurposing military drones to map groundwater tables in Buckinghamshire, or the twinning of the roll out of property flood resilience and energy efficiency measures for social housing in disadvantaged communities in Rochdale. There are too many to list, but you can discover more about our projects on our dedicated website .

We want to shout about the great work of our project teams. That’s why three years into the programmes, we have completed a mid-programme review that pulls out some of the learning and case studies from the projects.

We have drawn together the initial successes and challenges from our project teams into 5 learning points:

• ?Resilience unlocks wider benefits for people, places, and wildlife
• We need to better understand groundwater flood risk
• Monitoring and evaluation are crucial to understand long-term benefits
• Local community and political leadership are vital
• The third sector is critical to delivering resilience

We will be sharing the lessons learnt with government to help inform future policy approaches and investment options for flood and coastal risk management.

The mid programme report is testament to the hard work of the brilliant local authority led project teams working in partnership with so many others. I’m excited to see what else they discover in the next few years.