Tackling the effects of climate change by making space for water, reducing flooding, and improving water quality in the Silk Stream catchment for the benefit of communities and the environment.

We will deliver a suite of nature-based solutions to tackle multiple sources of flooding in a heavily urbanised catchment in north-west London. This will provide benefits to the local communities and the environment including amenity, health, social and biodiversity benefits.

Find more detail at our dedicated Action for Silk Stream webpage.

The River Brent is one of the London's longest tributaries to the River Thames. The Brent catchment is highly urbanised, flashy, and covers an area of approximately 153km², with Silk Stream one of its major tributaries, draining nearly one-fifth of the Brent catchment (~32.4km2). The catchment suffers from risks of flooding from the river, surface water, sewer surcharges (both surface and foul) and water quality issues. The impacts of climate change, significant urbanisation and population growth pose additional challenges.

Our project adopts a catchment-wide approach to tackle these flood risks in an integral manner in this heavily urbanised catchment. We will deliver natural flood management (NFM) solutions along the river corridors coupled with sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) in the urban areas. This approach is now needed to complement the traditional engineering undertaken in the past. In order to ensure long-term sustainability, the project will deliver innovative approaches to co-design project proposals with communities and local businesses and to support ongoing care and maintenance of the blue/green environment.

Our project will

• Deliver on the ground, catchment-wide schemes that reduce the risk of flooding to properties and infrastructure.
• Test the use of thermosensors for targeting sustainable urban drainage solutions.
• Demonstrate a new framework for future funding (innovative finance mechanism, drawing on ecosystem services / natural capital accounting metrics) of flood resilience that will generate evidence to inspire investment across London and other urban river catchments nationally.
• Demonstrate how a strong partnership approach can succeed in delivering an integrated set of land management measures to reduce flood risk at the catchment scale, as well as provide wider multiple benefits for local communities.
• Implement the robust monitoring and evaluation strategy to demonstrate a strong evidence base of the achieved benefits.
  Share successes and lessons learnt, through case studies, presentations and webinars reducing the evidence gap in catchment approaches to flood risk management (locally, regionally and nationally).

For any general information about our project, please email us at fwm@barnet.gov.uk. Our dedicated engagement partner is Thames21 who would be happy to speak to any local resident or community representatives to co-design workshops, where local residents can input on site plans, to park events for games and learning about rivers.

How our project is testing innovation

Thames Water will install thermo-sensors in their network to test the ingress of surface water in foul network, an approach being tested for the first time to target sustainable urban drainage solutions. We will explore new innovative frameworks for future funding, community stewardship opportunities safeguarding our assets and roll out its learnings. We will generate evidence to inspire investment across London and other urban river catchments nationally.

As part of FCRIP we will be testing 6 resilience actions and 1 policy challenge.

• Nature based solutions
• Monitoring and management of local assets
• Integrated water management solutions
• Community infrastructure resilience
• Minimise damages and disruption to small and medium sized businesses
• Community and voluntary sector action to be better prepared and recover more quickly
• Retrofitting drainage and water management arrangements in urban areas.
  

Visit the programme evaluation page to find out more.

Who we are working with

London Borough of Barnet, London Borough of Harrow, Defra, Environment Agency, Thames21, Metis, Lumby Consultancy, Thames Water, Thames Regional Flood & Coastal Committee (TRFCC), Greater London Authority (GLA), CIWEM (as Dissemination Partner- via The ENVIRONMENT magazine), Natural England, Canal and Rivers Trust, Friends of Silkstream, Silkstream Flood Action Group, Bentley Priory Management Committee, Greater Stanmore Country Park Committee, Burnt Oak Brook & Watling Park Friends, Harrow Nature Conservation Forum, Natural England, Friends of Chandos Park, UNITAS Youth Zone and many other local friends groups of the catchment.