Regional environment and sustainability award success

Shropshire Council and Mouchel Consulting have won an Environment and Sustainability award for drainage works at Battlefield in Shrewsbury.

The award, given by the Institute of Highway Engineers Mercia Branch, is for the design and construction of a sustainable drainage scheme (SuDS) near Battlefield roundabout in Shrewsbury.

The drainage scheme helps to reduce the impact of the highway on flooding that has occurred in the area previously. It involved removing a number of traditional highway drainage gullies and instead allowing water to run over the surface into a large swale, or depression, in the verge. Here, the water is stored and then released slowly back into the existing drainage system. The system reduces rate of flow from this part of the highway and so reduces flood risk downstream.  It forms part of the wider Shropshire Slow the Flow project.

Working in partnership with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Environment Agency, English Severn and Wye RFCC, landowners and community flood action groups, the aim of the Slow the Flow project is just that, to use natural methods to ‘slow the flow’ in a number of catchments and reduce flood risk to communities downstream.

The six-year project seeks to take an alternative approach to the management of flood risk rather than the construction of traditional flood defences, considering catchments as a whole, and looking to reduce or slow flows nearer to their source.

Simon Jones, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways and transportation, said:-

“This is great news and shows how we are committed to providing sustainable solutions to flooding issues which affect the highway.”

Mal Price, local Shropshire Councillor for Battlefield, said:-

“The Battlefield highway SuDS scheme forms a valuable part of the wider ‘slow the flow’ work in the Battlefield catchment.”