Burton, a town on the River Trent in East Staffordshire has been historically linked to and can attribute its growth to its dependency on, and links to, the River Trent. Burton has a history of regular flood events over the centuries, with the first flood defences built after 1932 as a direct response to extensive flooding that occurred that year, and the flood defences have been improved regularly since.
The Environment Agency, in partnership with East Staffordshire Borough Council, engaged with the town, its communities and other stakeholders to educate them about the flood risk and the defences and work through the challenges of the proposal.
Over 5,500 properties are at risk of flooding from the River Trent, 4,500 of which are homes. In 2019 work began to improve and update the 9km of existing defences in Burton, which consist of a mixture of walls, embankments and some areas of high ground, to improve the quality of approximately 3.7km of the defences, allowing for a consistent level of protection from the River Trent along the town.
Some of the measures include::
- provision of a consistent level of flood defence through the town with minimal height increase
- sheet piling sections of the defence, where in some stretches it will act as a wall with an embankment to one side, while in other sections, sheet piles will be covered by an embankment on both sides, with a minimum gradient 1:3
- supporting East Staffordshire Borough Council on developing a landscape vision to improve the Washlands area
Further flooding in 2020 of 18 properties and the A38 identified concerns for flooding to a further 300 properties. Following an investigation, a solution was devised and implemented by the contractors.
Now completed, the £30 million project successfully protected the town last winter and obtained £3 million in partnership funding for amenity and landscaping work.
Take a look at the completed project.
The initial project proposal is here.
And the official press release following its opening.