ARCHIVE: Ouseburn and North Gosforth pilot summary

Integrated Urban Drainage Pilots LogoLocal authority: Environment Agency, North East region

The Ouseburn is a urban tributary of the River Tyne. It drains the northern suburbs of Newcastle and discharges to the Tyne just east of Newcastle City Centre.

This study was focused on the North Gosforth area, in particular the Red House Farm Estate. In June 2005 a large thunder storm tracked across the Gosforth Area and around 80 properties were effected by flooding from the sewer network. This flooding occurred only a few years into the development of Newcastle Great Park, a large green field development which is ongoing in the area. Residents were concerned that the new development was going to increase flood risk in the area.

Northumbrian Water Ltd (NWL) instigated a study and identified that the sewer in the Red House Farm Estate was under capacity and estimated the standard of protection was around 1 in 5 year. To address this they implemented a £3.4 million capital scheme which included surface water separation and installation of a new overflows to increase capacity within the sewer to the 1 in 40 year standard.

As part of the study carried out by NWL they suggested that one of the contributory factors to the flooding was the interaction between the river and the combined sewer overflow at Red House Farm.

This IUD project, managed by the Environment Agency along with Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council and the Ouseburn Catchment Steering Group and supported by Northumbrian Water and Aone, focussed on studying the Ouseburn to understand if this interaction was happening and if so what might be done to address the problem.

To do this a network of monitoring equipment was installed and a new ISIS routing river model constructed to allow a better understanding of the Ouseburn in this location to be established.

Through public engagement we asked the residents in the areas what they thought was the cause of the problems and what their concerns and wishes were for the area. This led to some new avenues of investigation which were carried out as part of the project.

Through the study we have been able to provide evidence that the Ouseburn could reach a level where interaction with the sewer system was possible. Having reached this conclusion we looked in detail as to the major contributory factors to the flooding in the area. From this process we were able to highlight that the existing development areas of Red House Farm and Kingston Park (An neighbouring established mixed use development) were the major areas which impacted river flows. In one event in July 2007 the Kingston Park estate contributed almost 80% of the total river flow.

The study has then looked at how we could manage the catchment better to reduce the flood risk in the area. The project has looked at what opportunities there are within the study area to reduce flood peaks, these include the multiple use of Sustainable Drainage Ponds currently being constructed within the Great Park and improvements to the maintenance in the area.

However, the project has also been encouraging individuals to be more aware of their actions. Permitted development within existing residential areas has the potential to significantly increase flood risk. The project plans to produce an information leaflet that will inform the public of the impact of their choices, such as type of driveways to the way building works such as conservatories are drained. By encouraging individuals to accept small changes bigger benefits can be achieved downstream. Accepting that your garden may be damp for a day or two can reduce runoff downstream which stops flooding.

The project has presented a united front to the public which results in more trust being achieved and better engagement. The project has successfully shared data to a degree not usually achieved in individual studies.

Outputs

Page last modified: 12 January 2009
Page published: 5 March 2007