Implementation process
Point of departure of FRM strategies
Desired score to reach per layer in this pilot (Baseline monitor Southwell, 2017).
Stakeholders involved
- Nottinghamshire County Council
- Nottinghamshire District Council
- VIA East Midlands Ltd (Via)
- Landowners in Southwell
- Riparian owners living along the Potwell Dyke
- Insurance companies
- Local schools (e.g. Lowe's Wong Infant School)
- Scouts (Southwell Troops: Wooden and Thor)
- Estate agents, including Kirkland & Lane,Alasdair Morrisons,Richard Watkinson and Gascoines
- Citizens from Southwell town
- Severn Trent Water (the regional water supply, sewage treatment and drainage company),
- Internal Drainage Board (IDB maintain a stretch of the Potwell Dyke ).
Roles of key actors
The project is managed through two mechanisms, a working group consisting of Trent Rivers Trust, National Flood Forum and Nottinghamshire County Council, whose role and function is to coordinate activity, and a decision making steering group consisting of these organisations plus Nottingham Trent University, Environment Agency, Newark and Sherwood District Council, Southwell Flood Forum, Lowe's Wong Infant School and VIA (contractors from NCC to implement flood risk measures). Both groups meet quarterly.Working within a catchment means crossing boundaries, political or administrative. When applying the MLS approach, stakeholders are involved from every layer of governance, and collaboration amongst them is very important. Thus, in this FRAMES pilot the different statutory governance layers are:
- EU level
- National level
- Nottinghamshire County Council (regional level)
- Town Council and individual landowners (local level)
Collaboration among stakeholders across the governance layers is very important to avoid hitting barriers. The responsibilities of stakeholders involved in the pilot are:
Trent River Trust implements NFM in collaboration with landowners. They also provide training to the Southwell Flood Forum on using telemetric water level data during flood events. Nottingham Trent University is responsible for some of the wider monitoring the effectiveness of NFM interventions.
Southwell Flood Forum is a community flood action group established in September 2013 to take actions against floods and create a more resilient community. Included within the forum are professionals who know about flood risk (interview pilot manager, 2019). The Southwell Flood Forum provides the following services to communities: emergency plan, supporting a resilient Southwell, flood mitigation, fundraising and water course management (Southwell Flood Forum 2019).
The National Flood Forum is a national charity agency that brings people together to share knowledge and experience on flood risks, to create partnerships and support community action to increase resilience of communities towards floods. The National Flood Forum provides recovery services, information and advice about floods, professional training to prepared agencies and local authorities, and support communities action (National Flood Forum 2019).
Based on the services they provide explained above, both organisations (National Flood Forum and Southwell Flood Forum) are taking actions within the 3 layers of the MLS approach (interview pilot manager, 2019).
Nottinghamshire County Council is the Lead Local Authority responsible for surface water, fluvial on ordinary watercourses (Environment Agency is responsible for main watercourses) and groundwater. They have the mandate to coordinate flood risk management activities in Nottinghamshire (Nottinghamshire County Council 2019)(e.g. works by other statutory organisations). The Nottinghamshire County Council is the second major funder of the project and very interested to work in this FRAMES pilot (interview pilot manager, 2019).
The Highways Authority, in this case Nottinghamshire County Council, is responsible for certain aspects of drainage. In practice this service is delivered by Via East Midlands Ltd, a company wholly owned by Nottinghamshire County Council. The company aims to safeguard the delivery of a sustainable highways service for Nottinghamshire (ViaEM 2016) and also delivers civil engineering contracts for the council.
The Environment Agency is responsible for strategic co-ordination, management of main rivers, coastal flood risk and erosion and regulation. In the project area the main river responsibilities are undertaken by the Internal Drainage Board.
Severn Trent Water is the statutory body responsible for supplying water, collecting waste water and treating it and certain aspects of drainage. Their networks can be an important element in reducing flood risk.
Landowners are able to engage in the project on a voluntary basis and give the permission to install interventions on their land. Moreover, they will maintain the interventions for 5 years beyond the project time.
The Internal Drainage Board (IDB) is a statutory public body that manage water levels in an area, known as an Internal Drainage District, where there is a special need for drainage. There are a total of 112 IDBs in England and their responsibility is to reduce flood risk to people and property, and manage water levels for agricultural and environmental needs within their district (ada 2019). They cover part of the project area.