Five organisations, one shared goal
Living With Water exists because flooding in Hull and the East Riding is too big a challenge for any single organisation to tackle alone. Our five partners each bring something different – different responsibilities, different expertise, and different relationships with the land, water and communities we serve.
Yorkshire Water
Yorkshire Water is the region's water and wastewater company, responsible for supplying clean drinking water to homes and businesses across Yorkshire and treating the wastewater that leaves them. That includes managing an extensive network of sewers that runs beneath the streets of Hull and the East Riding.
Flooding and drainage are closely linked. When heavy rain falls faster than the sewer network can handle it, surface water backs up — and that's where homes and streets flood. Yorkshire Water's role in Living With Water focuses on easing that pressure: maintaining and improving the sewer network, and leading on the design and delivery of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) that slow the flow of rainwater before it reaches the sewers at all.
Yorkshire Water is also the lead partner for Living With Water, coordinating the partnership's work and helping to ensure that the programme delivers lasting benefits across the region.
Hull City Council
Hull City Council is the local authority responsible for running public services across the city – from housing and transport to planning, parks and highways. As a unitary authority, it holds a wide range of responsibilities that touch directly on how the city manages water.
The council is also a Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA), which gives it a formal statutory role in managing local flood risk from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses. That means it works across a range of partners, including those within Living With Water, to develop local flood risk management strategies, investigate significant flooding events and maintain registers of flood risk assets across the city.
Hull City Council also manages the city's highway network, which puts it at the heart of many SuDS projects. Roadside drainage, permeable surfaces and green corridors along streets all fall within its remit, making it a key delivery partner for the kind of changes we are working to embed across Hull.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council
East Riding of Yorkshire Council is one of the largest unitary authorities in England by land area, covering market towns, coastal communities and open agricultural landscapes.
Like Hull City Council, East Riding holds Lead Local Flood Authority status, giving it a statutory role in managing flood risk from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses across a varied and complex landscape.
The East Riding faces some different flood challenges to Hull with agricultural land drainage, coastal erosion, tidal risk along the Humber estuary and flash flooding in low-lying rural areas all part of the picture.
Through Living With Water, East Riding of Yorkshire Council contributes its local knowledge of drainage networks, watercourses and flood risk across the wider region.
Environment Agency
The Environment Agency is the national regulatory body responsible for protecting and improving the environment in England, operating under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Its work spans water quality, pollution control, waste regulation and, critically for Living With Water, flood risk management.
The Environment Agency is responsible for managing flood risk from main rivers and the sea, including the tidal defences that line the Humber estuary and play a vital role in keeping communities across Hull and the East Riding safe from tidal flooding.
It also operates the national Flood Warning and Informing Service, providing real-time alerts that help residents and businesses prepare when significant rainfall or tidal conditions are forecast.
As an enforcement agency, the Environment Agency also has powers to regulate activities that could affect flood risk, such as development near watercourses or the management of structures in rivers.
Within Living With Water, it brings national expertise in flood risk strategy alongside its on-the-ground knowledge of our region.
University of Hull
The University of Hull is the partnership's academic partner, bringing research expertise and monitoring capability to our work.
The university has long-standing expertise in flood risk, environmental science and sustainable urban development. Its researchers help to monitor the performance of SuDS schemes across Hull and the East Riding, tracking how well they manage water in real conditions and generating evidence that can shape future projects.
That research also feeds into the wider academic understanding of urban flood resilience, helping to ensure that what's learned in Hull informs approaches elsewhere.
Working together
Each partner brings its own area of responsibility but the work of Living With Water happens in the overlap.
A new SuDS scheme might involve Yorkshire Water's engineering expertise, Hull City Council's highway team, the Environment Agency's regulatory input and the University of Hull's monitoring equipment, all working toward the same outcome.
That kind of collaboration is what makes the partnership more than the sum of its parts.
