Guidance on enabling community maintenance for local flood risk management

This project will develop guidance on approaches to empower local community groups to undertake safe, appropriate and routine maintenance of local flood risk management (FRM) infrastructure (for surface water and ordinary watercourses). This will improve local resilience and define how communities can work on a voluntary basis with Risk Management Authorities (RMAs) to better reduce local flood risk. 

The research work was appointed to a team composed of HR Wallingford (Jonathan Simm) with support from the National Flood Forum and the Flood Hazard Research Centre among other. 

Project status
Phase 1 is ongoing and will produce by 2023 a principles document with case studies, and a summary of existing policies involving community maintenance. 

Phase 2 will then focus on 1) Guidance for community groups outlining maintenance activities for specific flood risk management assets, supporting the principles document, good practice, and the policy context; and 2) Guidance for Risk Management Authorities on facilitating and enabling community groups to undertake maintenance (on a voluntary basis). 

Fundraising for Phase 2 is ongoing, completion is expected beginning of 2024.

Further information
For further information download the project specification below and to get involved, please contact Adrien Baudrimont at CIRIA.