Working in partnership with the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames (LBRuT) and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), we have been awarded £6m from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to increase flood resilience in the Beverley Brook’s catchment in Richmond and areas of Wandsworth. The Community BlueScapes project runs over 6 years and is part of the £200m Flood and Coastal Resilience and Innovation Programme, managed by the Environment Agency (EA). We were one of 25 programmes selected to drive innovation in flood and coastal resilience and adaptation to a changing climate, across the country.

The project aims to:

• Improve the local communities’ flood resilience, using new and innovative ideas.
• Work with the community to shape and create the project, providing continuity and legacy.
• Equip the community with knowledge about how to become more resilient to flooding.
• Gather evidence to inform further investment in flood resilience, both locally and nationally.
• Create and adapt green and blue spaces to better cope with extreme weather events, with benefits including better water quality and biodiversity and improving amenity and recreation spaces; resulting in increases in health and wellbeing.

This project dovetails with BCL’s visions of conservation, biodiversity, wellbeing, lifelong learning and community engagement. We will provide detailed local knowledge of the area, catchment, habitats and species found there to the partnership, creating factual and anecdotal archives of events in and around our community. We will provide a focal point of resilience actions that individuals and groups of people can take.

Please share your photographs and experiences of historic and current flooding in Barnes, North Barnes, Mortlake and East Sheen. This will help us build a library of case studies. Images should be named ‘date, location, your initials’ e.g. “12 07 2021 Barnes Green JB”.

To find out more about the project, visit the Community BlueScapes website, or email [email protected]. You can find more information about all of the 25 projects on the EA website.

Latest blogs:

Stop Flooding: Start Shovelling

Using Natural Flood Management to Tackle Urban Flood Resilience

How to Prepare Your Home for Possible Flooding

How To Be More Flood Resilient In Barnes

Know Your Flood Risk – Be Prepared

Gully Guardians – Helping to Reduce Surface Water Flooding in the Area