Case study
Sainthill Baptist manse and church are both scheduled for installation of PFR after survey and recommendations. Sainthill Baptist church is listed and the installation cannot be completed until we have been issued the relevant consents (perfectly demonstrating the above point re. lead in times!) All of Kentisbeare is within a medium surface water flood risk zone with the most recent muddy floods being reported on September 17th 2024. The manse and church are situated in a low fluvial flood risk zone, but in a medium surface water risk zone and have been most recently flooded in 2022, internally and externally. The Church and Manse are a community facilities used for worship and various other ecclesiastical services and meet the criteria of a Community Asset as characterised by the PFR element of the Devon Resilience Innovation Project. This means that the building can be used by residents for shelter, hot food and drink when residential properties may be unusable in a major flood event such as those which are anticipated with the progress of climate change. PFR was fitted in order to test and trial innovative approaches to increase flood resilience in small rural catchments across Devon.
The property sits at the bottom of several hills rising to the East and West and there are reports of poorly functioning drains in the area which could increase the flood risk coming from surface water to lead to inundation from foul drainage also. After survey by Jeremy Benn Associates, who carried out the initial survey and M3 Floodtec who manufactured and installed the selected measures, the following recommendations were made and installed:
Having been only recently installed (April 2025), the measures have yet to be properly tested in a flood due to the prolonged dry period, but the church custodians are now fully prepared to act in the event that the property is needed to shelter community members. Knowledge sharing as a result of the project has increased awareness of measures which can be taken in order to respond to and recover from flooding more rapidly and having suffered less damage than if these works to the building and subsequent engagement had not been carried out.
Proactively selling PFR to a community who have not reactively reached out for support is infinitely more complex.
Engagement required needs to be extensive and break through many different perceived barriers, questions we were repeatedly asked during the engagement campaign for our Work Package 2 which consulted with property managers and owners across 10 different catchment locations were;
Will it impact on the value of the business? What if I want to sell?
Is this a scam (targeted recipients suspicious of 100% grant funding offer)?
Does it really flood here? – even communities who flood are still unaware of climate change flood forecasts in their area and how flooding may be exacerbated.
Engagement should ideally sit with a single point of contact – we were unable to resource this solely and so engagement was split across the different organisations involved, but this was not ideal.
Community Asset buildings are typically leased, in some cases governed by a management committee or group, and more likely to be listed. All of these situations lead to a much longer lead in time to survey and installation, requiring multiple consultations with the various stakeholders.
The ongoing impact of surface water flooding and the nature of very flashy floods which can gather velocity and speed rapidly has led to the project developing a surface water flood forecasting system in order to give residents in flashy catchments some advance warning of pluvial flooding. This is currently being trialled in 9 different catchments across the project in order to refine the alerts and we are seeking legacy with the EA National Telemetry team in order to complement the fluvial and coastal flood alerts currently issued by the agency.
PFR was trialled along with Natural Flood Management and the flood warning system in several catchments and in both Hemyock and Kentisbeare a project partner has delivered NFM in the upper catchment in order to mitigate the levels of surface water present in storm events. In Stokeinteignhead, a show case catchment for which the project has won the surface water management award at the Flood and Coast Excellence Awards 2025, the approach of combining PFR, NFM and the flood warning trial has tangibly increased levels of flood resilience in the village. PFR is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but the high level learning is that more low cost replicable solutions are needed in catchments to increase overall resilience.
Being prepared for potential flooding is an important element of being flood resilient as it leads to approaches to use PFR measures. It’s about understanding your flood risk, now and for the future.
