£1.5m to be invested in Wyre flood defences

Wyre's flood defences are set to be upgraded with £1.5m of private finance secured through an innovative new funding programme.

The money has been granted to The Wyre Natural Flood Management project (Wyre NFM) which will deliver more than 1,000 highly targeted measures, including tree planting, creation of temporary water storage areas, leaky dams and a network of hedges that will significantly reduce flooding.

The Wyre NFM project was initiated by United Utilities, Environment Agency, and The Rivers Trust in 2019 with the aim of developing a new commercial business model to accelerate landscape and nature recovery which can attract private financing and innovative contracting structures to supplement public funding and address flood risk.

It has been led by the Wyre Rivers Trust, The Rivers Trust national, and Triodos Bank UK. Other partners include Markerstudy, United Utilities, Flood Re, Co-op Insurance, Wyre Council, Northwest Regional Flood and Coastal committee with Hogan Lovells providing pro bono legal advice.

The Wyre Catchment Community Interest Company was established as an independent entity to raise £850,000 of financial investment to go alongside a £526,0000 grant from the Woodland Trust via the Northern Forests Grow Back Greener programme, as part of Defra’s Nature For Climate Fund.

The money has been raised in the form of a nine-year loan and will be repaid through the sale of ecosystem services to organisations that will seek to benefit from those interventions including flood risk reduction, carbon sequestration, increasing biodiversity and improving water quality. Local farmers and landowners will then be paid to host and maintain those NFM assets.

Mark Lloyd, CEO of The Rivers Trust, said: "During COP26 and the build-up to the biodiversity summit in China in 2022 we are going to hear a lot of talk about private finance for nature-based solutions to the climate and biodiversity emergencies on Planet Earth.

"This project is a rare example of that talk being converted into action at a local scale to create a template which is already being replicated elsewhere in the UK. This project could not be delivered by any one organisation on its own, but by a collection of groups taking collaborative action, we can bring about multiple benefits for people and the environment alike."

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