Partner organisations

Dartmoor National Park
Devon County Council
Devon communities together
Devon wildlife trust
Environment Agency
Exmoor national park
Food, farm and countryside commission
National Trust
North Devon biosphere
North Devon council
Plymouth city council
Teignbridge district council
Torbay council
Torridge district council
Westcountry Rivers Trust
South west water
University of Exeter
University of Plymouth

Blackdown Hills National Landscape

  • Connecting the culm – This project is working to improve flood resilience through community engagement and delivery of Nature Based Solutions in six communities in sub-catchments of the culm (Hemyock, Culmstock, Lyner, Halberton, Weaver, Kentisbeare). Find more detail on the Connecting the Culm project website.

Devon Wildlife Trust

  • Ottery St Mary, Beaver management strategy framework – This project will focus on raising awareness of beaver activities across the catchment, providing support for landowners, improving or creating habitat to encourage beavers in appropriate locations in the catchment based on recently developed mapping tools. Watch this video (credit: Devon Wildlife Trust) for more information on the role of beavers in natural flood management.
  • Nature recovery network – This project will link the Nature Recovery Network mapping with wider flood resilience across the landscape, to show where multiple benefits can be gained for biodiversity and flooding.

Devon Communities Together

  • Stakeholder engagement – This will be ongoing throughout the project to engage with local communities, flood groups and parish/town councils to maintain, sustain and deliver new flood resilience measures in their community.
  • Community funding – This project will develop funding models for communities to maintain, sustain and deliver new flood resilience and natural flood management measures in their community.
  • Community preparedness – Through the Devon Community Resilience Forum, Devon Communities Together will support parish and town councils and flood groups with developing or updating their emergency plans.
  • Find out more information through the Devon Communities Together website.

Devon County Council

  • Exton – This project is working to improve flood resilience through community engagement and delivery of Natural Flood Management to address surface water flood issues.
  • South Pool – This project is working to improve flood resilience through community engagement and delivery of Natural Flood Management to address surface water flood issues.
  • Stokeinteignhead – This project will provide natural flood management to Stokeinteignhead, alongside an existing community wide Property Flood Resilience scheme and promoting community engagement throughout.
  • Smart gullies – This project will identify suitable communities and locations across Devon for the installation of smart gullies, which can give information on gully maintenance to enable the early warning of flood risk  and when to deploy Property Flood Resilience.
  • Community asset Property Flood Resilience (PFR) – This project will target PFR measures at village halls, doctors surgeries, local shops and pubs, which are considered community assets where people can take shelter or receive supplies in a flood event, to enable faster recovery.
  • Surface water flood forecasting – This project will develop and trial a surface water flood forecasting system using new technologies to help communities prepare and react quicker to potential flooding.

Environment Agency

  • Catchment visualisation tool – This project will create an interactive visualisation tool to demonstrate the effects that natural flood management can have in a community to increase engagement.
  • Flood resilience Hub – This project will provide communities across Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly with access to information and resources to better understand flood resilience and to be better prepared for flooding and coastal change.
  • Miyawaki Forest concept – This project is using natural flood management measures across an urban (Torbay) and rural (Dartmoor) area with a joint project between Torbay Council and the Environment Agency.

National Trust

  • Tattiscombe – This project will deliver a river restoration scheme which includes attenuations and flood plain reconnection a rapid response type catchment on Exmoor.

North Devon Biosphere Foundation

  • Smart biosphere and Natural Flood Management project – This project will use AI and smart technology to measure river and soil conditions, alongside rainfall and predictive weather data, to provide evidence for deployment of flood risk resilience measures. A catchment scale predictive flood warning system will also be created for local communities of Combe Martin and the Little Dart. Further information is available on the following webpages: Little Dart and Combe Martin.

North Devon Council and Torridge District Council

  • Fluvial change management areas – This project will engage with communities to explore how they can adapt to climate change and identify areas where flood risk could increase to inform future planning decisions and funding applications.

Plymouth City Council

  • Plymouth building flood resilience in deprived communities – This project will develop methods to maximise engagement in socio-economically deprived areas of Plymouth to improve community flood resilience.
  • Plymouth green minds – This project will provide flood risk management, ecological and amenity benefits in green areas, through developing surface water corridors across green spaces and parks in Plymouth.
  • Plymouth better places – This project will provide a new sustainable drainage system in the city centre to improve capacity and reduce the risk of flooding from the existing combined sewer network.

Teignbridge District Council

  • Strategic flood resilience – This project will ensure strategic flood resilience is included within spatial planning of flood resilience measures.

Torbay Council

  • Local rainfall radar – This project will use local rainfall data to inform real-time modelling of the drainage system in Torbay to trial a local flood warning system.
  • Realtime direct and indirect impact flood mapping – This project will identify critical infrastructure and properties at risk of flooding, improve preparation time.
  • Miyawaki Forest concept – This project is using natural flood management measures across an urban (Torbay) and rural (Dartmoor) area with a joint project between Torbay Council and the Environment Agency.

West Country Rivers Trust

  • Upstream thinking – This project engages with eight communities across ten small rapid response type catchments. It provides natural flood management solutions to support flood resilience and to mitigate the impacts of climate change in Ashburton, Bampton, Beer, East Budleigh, Honiton, Lympstone, Walkhampton and Whitchurch. Find out more on the West County Rivers Trust website.

University of Exeter, University of Plymouth

  • Monitoring – PhD students will carry out monitoring and research activities which will help evaluate the impact of the project on flood risk, the use of smart technology, social impacts and other benefits such as improving biodiversity, water quality and carbon sequestration.