Over 100,000 properties across Hull and East Riding are at risk from flooding – amongst the highest exposure of any urban area in Europe.
At Living With Water, we’re rolling out a more resilient future, with community engagement at heart.
Hull and East Riding’s vulnerability
Hull has earned its place on the map with its festivals, history, and rising sport teams – but it’s our flood risk that makes it unlike almost anywhere else in the UK. With over 90% of the city lying below high tide level, threats come from five directions at once:
• Tidal
• River
• Groundwater
• Sewer
• Surface water
Historic drainage decisions have left a highly interconnected system, causing vulnerability that saw the June 2007 surface water flooding and over 8,600 homes affected. The event didn’t just expose infrastructure gaps. It showed us that flood resilience without community trust doesn’t hold.
Our response
Living With Water is made up of five organisations: Yorkshire Water, Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the Environment Agency, and the University of Hull. Our premise is simple: to help people living with flood risk to understand it better, and to shape how our region responds to it.
Our first point of action is a 25-year Blue-Green plan – ambitious because it needs to be:
• A £1.5 billion programme for a more resilient future
• Nature-based solutions that boost biodiversity
• Integrated planning for the most effective responses
• Community participation and satisfaction built in from the start, not the end
By combining each organisation's areas of expertise and responsibility through the Living With Water partnership, we have become thought leaders on flood resilience, with the University in Hull continuing to lead our region's globally significant research into flooding and the environment.
Derringham – our first priority location
Given its 2007 flood history, Derringham was identified as one of our first priority locations, harbouring both strategic importance and suitability for large-scale retrofit Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).
We delivered technical solutions, but never without the people who’d live alongside them. Our team engaged residents before, during, and after construction, so they had their say. These included:
• Consultation events
• Community drop-ins
• Door-knocking campaigns
• Hand-delivered communications
• Councillor briefings
• School engagement activities
• Community group discussions
358
Engagement hours
36
Consultation events
570+
Residents educated about SuDS
3
Community groups engaged
The result
The Derringham scheme created six aquagreens across west Hull, transforming underused public open spaces into multifunctional climate resilience assets that:
• Act as large detention basins
• Temporarily store excess water during extreme rainfall events
• Return water flows safely to the drainage network over time
The scheme also delivered:
💧 £8.4 million investment
💧 Over 500 properties directly benefited
💧 More than 1,800m³ of flood storage
💧 Species-rich wildflower habitats
💧 Biodiversity net gain
💧 New educational and monitoring infrastructure
But, most importantly, community voices directly influenced the final scheme. Residents raised concerns about parking, so we adjusted it. They wanted assets better protected, so we added plant hedges.
What’s to come
Derringham’s engagement sits within our broader programme, which delivers everything from community events, education visits, school workshops, career activities, and flood awareness campaigns across Hull and East Yorkshire.
Our Ambassadors are central to that: their community voices, local influence and credibility help residents build personal resilience, not just awaiting their scheme’s arrival.
As we take the next steps in flood resilience and in how we work alongside the people it affects, this is only the start – with the next phase of our 25-year Blue-Green plan including a £26.3m investment from Yorkshire Water.
Curious? Learn more about our previous work in our Projects section, or read our press release about our plans for the next five years.
