To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress has been made on Project Groundwater in Lambourn Valley.
Answered on
7 January 2025
Project Groundwater is funded by the £150 million Flood & Coastal Resilience Innovation programme, managed by the Environment Agency (EA). The programme includes 25 local projects around the country that are testing practical ways of bolstering resilience to flooding and coastal change.
Project Groundwater has produced a new community-level, automated groundwater flood warning system, www.projectgroundwater.co.uk/floodwarning. This went live as a trial in the Lambourn Valley on 4 December and the EA are currently collating feedback for the next phase of improvements. The next key output will be new improved groundwater flood risk maps which are expected to be published in February. The project has also been gathering data via a Flood Experience Questionnaire, to target invitations for property flood resilience surveys in the new year, helping us to develop trials of community flood resilience measures. The project is also seeking to identify locations for nature-based solutions to help with groundwater flooding.
Collectively all aspects of Project Groundwater will have longer term benefits to the Lambourn Valley. These include ensuring groundwater is robustly addressed in planning applications whilst better understanding the mental health impacts of groundwater flooding.