Our River, Our Future

December 2021

We are undertaking this project with support from the Greggs Urban Regeneration Fund. Work on the project started in early 2020 and is set to continue until January 2023. The initial stages of the project focused on working at Claver Hill in Lancaster. Claver Hill is a community food growing initiative. The site has historically suffered from flooding, due to surface runoff, with a considerable area of the site being virtually unusable for growing crops. The nearby stream has also suffered from water quality and flow regime issues, and is culverted through the Claver Hill site. Working with a local specialist a Natural Flood Management scheme was designed to address the uncontrolled flooding and the issues with the stream. A series of ponds and channels have been excavated and the stream has been re-directed out of the culvert to flow through these NFM features. The ponds and channels slow down and temporarily store flood water, there by reducing the extent of flooding and improving the quality of the water. The flooding has also now been contained to these ponds and channels, meaning that more of the site has now available for cultivation.