Learning from community-led flood risk management

Key findings
• While flood risk management (FRM) policy in Scotland requires the consideration of natural flood management (NFM), many landowners do not yet support their implementation. Since many measures to support NFM can only be carried out with the support and participation of land-managers, it is particularly important to understand the perceptions of these stakeholders.
• Many land-managers would consider implementation of NFM measures only if they were compatible with farm business strategies, financially viable and conformed to concepts of ‘good’ farming. Despite strong political drive to implement NFM to complement traditional approaches to FRM downstream, limited uptake of these measures by landowners still remains. Traditional approaches such as dredging and drainage are perceived as the most desirable options.
• In the case study catchment the flooding issues are waterlogging, fluvial flooding, standing water, insufficient drainage and hydraulic constrictions.
• The study identified the following FRM measures which may be useful in the case study catchment:
- Two-stage channel
- Re-meandering
- Dredging
- Removal of Constrictions
- Riparian buffer strips
- Retention ponds
- Aeration/ mole ploughing
- Tree planting
- Hedgerows
- Cover crops

Key recommendations and suggestions for future steps to promote NFM include:
• Trial land-manager led initiatives
• Catchment-wide coordinated planning
• Use of a facilitator
• Long term continuation of community led approach coupled with demonstration visits to other sites
• Tailoring of funding
• Investment in community awareness engagement (e.g. public workshops)
• Coordinated funding streams to enable “top-up” funding between different sources for one project and not be considered “double funding”
• Learning from other disciplines to facilitate individual buy-in (e.g. water quality)