Highways England working to reduce flooding along the A616
Farmers and landowners who manage land north of the A616 near Stocksbridge are invited to submit bids later this month (May) for funding to reduce flooding in the area.
The innovative scheme, led by Highways England and Atkins Limited aims to tackle repeated flooding along the A616.
The funding, available to bid for from Monday 24th May, will allow for natural flood management (NFM) measures to be carried out, which intercepts, stores and slows the flow of water from land north of the road.
Tom De la Rosa, Highways England Senior Environment Advisor said: “The advantage of this scheme is farmers are able to design their own interventions and cost them before submitting a bid to the funding portal.
“We recognise farmers know their land better than anyone and are therefore best placed to put a proposal together. By implementing these innovative measures, we’re hopeful the flooding incidents along the A616, between Langsett and Deepcar, will be reduced.”
Andy Gill, Principal Environmental Scientist at Atkins Limited added: “We believe this project is the first of its kind in England. We developed an approach with Highways England, which fast tracks such schemes to be on the ground within a year. This has been made possible by using innovative tools to select the funding areas, making the scheme simple to roll out and placing trust in the landowners applying for funding.”
Farmers who are interested in developing schemes and want to apply for funding can contact Catchment Officer, Chloe Palmer to find out more about this exciting project.
The deadline for submissions is Monday 14th June and more information is available via the NFM Fund portal: https://catchmentbasedapproach.org/learn/he-nfm-fund/
