Developed from the Tyneside Sustainable Sewerage Study, the Northumbrian Integrated Drainage Partnership (NIDP) brings together 13 Lead Local Flood Authorities from across the North East with the Environment Agency and Northumbrian Water to reduce flood risk and promote sustainable drainage. The partnership works together to prioritise and jointly fund integrated flood risk studies and joint delivery schemes to tackle flooding from sewers, rivers and surface water affecting communities across the North East.
Since 2012, over 20 drainage areas have been studied, leading to delivery of more than 10 schemes, including the multi-award-winning Tyneside projects at Brunton Park, Monkton and Fellgate. Partners have already jointly invested over £9m to reduce flood risk to around 1,000 homes, with more projects currently in construction or in the planning and design stages.
By managing risk from all sources and across all partners, the NIDP approach delivers far greater benefits than simply flood reduction, for example habitat creation and water quality improvements are regular additional aspects to the schemes delivered to date.
Through the NIDP, partners are also challenging national processes to enable partnership working to be more easily undertaken and to be rolled out nationally to address flood risk and deliver multiple environmental benefits.
The approach is also being promoted by the Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans development team under the 21st Century Drainage programme to ensure that future drainage and wastewater management planning places integrated flood risk at its core.
The NIDP has been recognised nationally as an exemplar of partnership working, shortlisted at the Water Industry Awards 2018 and winning the Project Excellence Partnership Award at the 2018 Flood and Coast Conference.