The Environment Agency is currently working with Kent County Council, Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council and Maidstone Borough Council to develop options to reduce the risk of flooding to communities via the proposed £6 million-plus River Medway Flood Storage Areas (FSAs) project.

Over 3,000 homes and businesses in Tonbridge, Hildenborough, Yalding and Collier Street and surrounding communities are at risk of flooding from the River Medway, the River Beult, and the River Teise - of these, 2,060 are at significant risk of flooding.

Communities in these areas were affected by flooding in 2013/14, and six times between 1960 and  2000/01.

The Agency presented the Initial Assessment for the Medway Flood Storage Areas (FSA) project to the partnership in February 2016, describing the options their costs and benefits and the government funding available. It considered the costs and benefits of:

• increasing the capacity of the Leigh FSA
• flood storage in two locations on the River Teise
• flood storage on the River Beult
• walls around Yalding
• increasing the channel capacity by dredging the River Medway between Yalding and Maidstone

According to the findings,  increasing the capacity of the Leigh FSA appears to be feasible and will improve the level of protection to Tonbridge and to a lesser extent other communities downstream. Improvements to benefit Hildenborough will be included in the project,  which will need to occur at the same time as those at Leigh.

However, the flood storage options for the Rivers Beult and Teise have been ruled out. The Agency said the schemes would "cost a great deal but would not provide the benefits that were originally envisaged" and would only protect some of the properties currently at a low risk of flooding .

Walls around Yalding and dredging were also both eliminated on technical and economic grounds. Both the Environment Agency and Kent County Council consider that the communities at risk in these areas would be better served by more localised flood defences and property and community level resilience measures which can be targeted to the properties at greater risk.

The Environment Agency will now lead work with the communities around Yalding, Collier Street and Laddingford on community and property resilience options for these areas. They will be able to bid for government contributions when they have developed a feasible scheme. The partners have also agreed to contribute to this, with Kent County Council contributing £1.5 million.

A bid for funding to improve the Leigh FSA and defences for Hildenborough will also be prepared separately.  The Agency said that assuming this is approved,  this will be funded by government, KCC and TMBC together with private sector contributions. There is also a bid to the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) for £4.5 million, which, if successful, will contribute to the scheme and a separate flood alleviation scheme for East Peckham.

The Agency plans to brief communities at a number of locations during October.

In terms of timescales, the approval process requires the business case to be worked up in increasing levels of detail. Having completed the initial assessment the Agency is now working on the outline business case which will lead to the full business case being submitted to Defra in 2018. Once approved, it will then move to the detailed design phase in 2018-2019. Currently, the Environment Agency’s indicative funding programme shows construction between 2019 and 2022.