SEPA publishes guidance on natural flood management

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has published a new handbook to help flood risk management authorities and land managers implement natural flood management measures. The guidance is timely given recent floods and the debate regarding the need for new ways to manage flooding. The handbook details how natural flood management techniques such as riparian planting, reinstating floodplains, restoring coastal areas or returning watercourses back to a more natural shape can contribute, as part of a suite of measures, to help reduce the impact of frequent flooding on a smaller scale.

ADA welcomes the guidance and recognises that natural flood management techniques can have a key role to play in ‘slowing the flow’ and reducing flood risk alongside the building and maintenance of fixed defences and water management assets, river maintenance, and resilience measures to deliver Total Catchment Management.

The new Natural Flood Management Handbook can be downloaded from the SEPA website.

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