The Challenge
Flood resilience starts with understanding
Estcourt Primary School is located in a densely built inner-city neighbourhood at significant risk of surface water flooding. Like most of Hull, the school and the streets around it are vulnerable when heavy rain falls faster than the combined sewer network can cope.
The school was already neighbour to something significant: Living With Water's Rosmead Street scheme, which was transforming an ordinary residential road into Hull's first fully permeable paved street.
That proximity created an opportunity. With a major flood resilience project being built on the children's doorstep, the school became the ideal place to connect real infrastructure to real learning.
The Solution
Getting hands on in and out of the classroom
We delivered a dedicated Water Day at Estcourt Primary School in early 2023. The day included a whole-school assembly covering the water cycle, the causes and impacts of flooding, and why flood resilience matters for communities like those in Hull and the East Riding.
Classroom workshops followed, giving pupils the chance to explore flooding through hands-on activities, including practical investigations into how water moves through different surfaces and materials.
The day also included a co-design session in which pupils worked with our team to shape a sustainable drainage scheme for their own school grounds. Their ideas directly informed the planters installed on site, giving them a stake in the outcome and a connection to the results they could see every day.
Planting and paving
As a result of the co-design work, a series of SuDS planters were donated to the school and installed in the grounds. Connected to roof downpipes, the planters capture rainwater before it becomes runoff, slowing the flow of surface water into the combined sewer network during heavy rainfall.
They also provide wildlife habitat and biodiversity benefits, supporting plants and insects in an otherwise dense urban environment.
The connection to Rosmead Street also went beyond the classroom. When the permeable paving scheme reached its final stages, children from the school were invited to help lay some of the final blocks.
Pupils also helped install bird boxes in the green spaces along the street, contributing to the biodiversity gains that sit alongside the scheme's flood resilience benefits.
1
school assembly delivered
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SuDS planters installed in school grounds
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bird boxes installed along Rosemead Street
£0
cost to the school - fully partnership-funded
The Solution
Flood resilience made real
Our engagement with Estcourt Primary School gave pupils a genuine understanding of why flood resilience matters in the place they live.
The SuDS planters in the school grounds provide infrastructure the children helped design and can see in action every day. Their involvement in laying the final permeable blocks on Rosmead Street gave them a direct hand in a real piece of flood resilience infrastructure in their own neighbourhood.
