With 100,000 homes in Hull and the East Riding at risk of flooding our ambition is to invest in blue green infrastructure schemes to increase surface water flood resilience.
In delivering the Living with Water schemes, we aim to involve residents and communities to co-create what the flood schemes will look like. This project is modelling a range of sustainable drainage solutions (SuDS) at Bilton Community Primary School to reduce the likelihood of flooding in the future. SuDS aim to mimic natural drainage by slowing and capturing the water flow and holding excess water during a heavy rainfall event.
Bilton Community Primary School SuDS scheme
We have been working with Bilton Community Primary School for the past two years, both through our engineers modelling the area and our research project MAGIC, to understand the flood risk in Bilton and at the school. The school has already had an outdoor classroom and pond created through the MAGIC scheme - see images below.
This enables children to learn outdoors and understand more about the area in which they live, engage with nature and the natural habitat, and plant lots of lovely wild flowers. We will be adding to this to enhance the outdoor learning opportunity for the children.
Our education officer recently visited the school to co-create our SuDS scheme with the children in Year 6. Starting with a lesson about the water cycle, children learnt more about how little water we have on our planet and how to value it, but also how, by harnessing rainwater, we can value this precious commodity and also become resilient to the flood risk in Hull. The students were very keen to design a scheme in their school and set about creating amazing green spaces that has fed into design by our principle engineers Stantec.
Students have been involved with designing our scheme for Bilton Community Primary School - with new SuDS coming to the school soon. We are planning to install rainwater planters, water butts and tree pits, and carry out upgrades to the drainage on the car park and playground, to mitigate some of the surface water risk faced at the school.
We will keep you informed on here, so keep checking in or follow us on Twitter @livingwithh2o or Facebook's Living with Water page.
Scheme visuals
Frequently asked questions
- When would the work start?
For the school, we are aiming to start the hard standing play areas and car parks during the summer holidays of 2023. Moving into the winter periods, we are looking to conduct work on the fields when they are not in use by the children.
- What work is taking place currently in my area?
At the moment we are looking at Bilton village and currently conducting surveys.
- Will there be any disruptions to traffic routes?
We hope to be using the direct entry road to the school but will update should there be any changes to this plan.
- How long will the work take?
We hope the programme will take around six months but will ensure we will provide updates on that.
- What is surface water flooding?
Surface water flooding happens when rainwater does not drain away through the normal drainage systems or soak into the ground, but lies on or flows over the ground instead, causing potential risks of flooding to properties. (Source: GOVUK)
- Who is responsible for the scheme?
The scheme will be a Living With Water scheme, meaning the parties involved in the Partnership (Yorkshire Water, Hull City Council, Environment Agency, East Riding of Yorkshire Council) would be responsible for parts of or all of the works.
- Will it cost me any money?
The scheme will not cost the resident any money. It is funded through the Living With Water Partnership which, in turn, has received money from the Government to put in place schemes to provide infrastructure in Hull to mitigate flooding.
