Tangible results are starting to be achieved by the West Yorkshire Flood Innovation Programme (WY FLIP) just a year after it was first launched. Partners have joined together to bid for extra funds for their region to make it more resilient to flooding and climate change.
An example to illustrate how their collaborative ways of working have paid off is a recent 187k bid to the Yorkshire Regional Flood & Coastal Committee for a project focused on Property Flood Resilience (PFR).
The project builds on existing work undertaken by a pathfinder project to enable a PFR Assurance Mapping Tool database to be launched to benefit lead flood authorities in our region and further afield in their drive to protect properties from flooding.
WY FLIP partners seized the opportunity to develop the Local Levy bid to include property level resilience surveys with communities at risk of flooding in West Yorkshire. The findings of the surveys will be entered into the PFR Assured database to enable us further build resilience to flood risk across West Yorkshire.
A starting point was a Local Levy bid by Leeds City Council to develop a tool as a resource for the whole region. This mapping tool is being developed further taking into account the evaluation from an 18-month Yorkshire Property Flood Resilience DEFRA pathfinder project, led by Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme iCASP and recommendations from both the Ox Cam and South West pathfinders.
Within record time, the proposed PFR bid was approved by the WY FLIP Programme Board and welcomed by its Steering Group. Feedback from both groups has been incorporated into its development.
Bradford Council put together the bid as their role within WY FLIP is to lead one of the programme’s five themes – Property Flood Resilience. A team worked rapidly and efficiently with input from all partners and the Environment Agency to update, expand and submit a new, refreshed and robust bid to the Local Levy Committee.
The PFR Assurance Mapping Tool highlights what interventions could still be put into place for properties at flood risk. If successful the bid will enable 50 surveys per local authority area to be carried out. These surveys will be of residential and business properties that have PFR measures in place and the results will be fed into the PFR Assured tool.
A driver of the bid has been to challenge current models where PFR is seen as a reactive response to flooding, rather than proactive which would enable more resilience at the household level. The improved tool would provide evidence about what households and businesses need to be resilient to guide and influence how we develop and plan PFR in the future.
To conclude, this is a great example of how by pooling resources through WY FLIP we can achieve more, share common experiences, come up with new solutions, save time and resources and reduce flood risk to more people. The bid will provide an opportunity to scale up learning, inform the future and be useful to people outside the region.