A £10 million flood scheme which will protect almost 2,000 homes and businesses, hold more than 250 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water during a flood and includes more than 5 hectares of urban wetland habitat, has been officially completed today.

The Environment Agency has marked the completion of its Salford Flood Improvement Scheme to coincide with World Wetlands Day. The flood basin is already fully operational and will be used during a flooding event as required.

The Salford scheme has not only created a flood storage basin in Salford to reduce the risk of flooding from the River Irwell but also to provide a boost to local wildlife populations by including a high quality urban wetland habitat.

Wetlands provide multiple benefits such as slowing the flow of water, reducing flood risk, filtering water and capturing carbon - their importance is increasing as a result of climate and land use change.

In its primary function, the multi-million pound scheme will provide increased protection to more than 1,900 homes and businesses across Lower Broughton and Lower Kersal. Lower Broughton was affected by the devastating floods that struck the city on Boxing Day in 2015.

The entire 28 hectare flood basin sits within a meander loop of the River Irwell and will protect surrounding properties by holding up to 650 million litres of water during flood conditions.

The new defence, which took three years to construct, is an ‘offline’ storage basin that will work in tandem with the existing flood storage area which completed in 2005. To create the storage capacity ground was excavated from the site and then reused to build a raised embankment around the periphery to form part of the defence system.

The embankment’s south-west corner features an inlet to allow the controlled spill of water into the basin when river levels are high. Water is then stored in the basin during a flood and released by two outlet pipes back into the river once the water level has dropped.

The flood embankments have been planted with 10ha of wildflower habitat, to attract pollinating species such as lady birds, moths, butterflies and bees – whose population has dramatically declined across the county in recent years.

Floods Minister Thérèse Coffey said the government had been able to support the scheme as part of a £39.5 million investment in Greater Manchester by 2021. Funding for the scheme came from a number of sources. £5m came from Government Gant-in-Aid, £4.1m came from a Government growth fund and the remaining £1.2m came from Salford City Council.