Minimising flood risk in Brooke Road

Background

Project Centre worked with the London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF) to deliver a flood alleviation proposal for Brooke Road, Oliver Road, Chestnut Avenue North, Chestnut Avenue South and St. Mary’s Church of England Primary School. 

In summer 2021, Brooke Road and its surroundings were affected by a serious flooding episode. This caused severe damage to residetns’ properties and forced the enarby school to close. The Council commissioned us to tackle this issue, minimising flood risks and enhancing biodiversity.

Our expert flood and water management team worked collaboratively with the clients and stakeholders, introducing Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) features to slow down and control surface water run-off. This also provided retention of rainfall, improved water quality, and a reduced risk of local flooding. 

Process

Some of the services and measures we offered included:

• Ensuring we took all constraints into account. These included flood risk, utilities, construction timings and access routes during construction. 
• Discussing with utility companies to ensure that the design could be implemented with the correct safety measures. 
• Engaging with the local community, primary schools and other key stakeholders to develop sustainable measures
• Designing a combination of rain gardens along the carriageway on Brooke Road to manage rainwater run-off. These solutions come with new attractive and low-maintenance planting palettes which also help boosting biodiversity and community’s engagement
• Engaging with contractors to install permeable carriage surfacing which provides additional water storage

Impact of our flood alleviation schemes

By innovatively combining permeable paving, rain gardens and attenuation tanks, our expert team provided the community and our client with a significant increase of water storage for the area.

From the modelled catchment, this design would attenuate flows to the 1 in 100 year plus 40% climate change rainfall event. The scheme met resident’s satisfaction as well as lowered their concerns of being affected by heavy rain-fall again. It also ensured safe access routes for the school even during the most intense rainfall events. 

We recently spoke to a resident in Brooke Road, who commented about the scheme:

“I’m really glad you’ve done this. It’s a real reassurance for us and for the kids’ families. I remember that flooding episode. The water was up to the house fence, you can still see the water marks here. Really well done to you and the Council for addressing and solving this issue.” – A resident in Brooke Road