What is Natural Flood Management?

Natural Flood Management is based on the ethos of managing flood risk through natural means, protecting, restoring and emulating natural processes within a catchment. These measures help reduce flood risk by storing and slowing water, managing connectivity and allowing water to recharge into the ground.

Natural Flood Management can provide environmentally sensitive approaches to reducing flood risk. This may be in areas where hard flood defences are not viable, or as part of a wider catchment plan to aid risk reduction. Hard defences will not always provide the best or most long-term solution.

What Natural Flood Management does

Uses natural processes to increase flood resilience
Protects, restores and mimics natural functions
Slows and stores water, and dissipates wave energy

The benefits of a Natural Flood Management project can be far-reaching beyond flood risk management itself, and are likely to include enhanced habitats, improved water quality and broader ecological recovery.

The Environment Agency has prepared an Evidence Directory looking in detail at the effectiveness of different Natural Flood Management measures. In September 2023, the Environment Agency and DEFRA announced £25 million in funding for a new NFM programme.

FPS Environmental Ltd has expertise working with communities and clients to assess and implement Natural Flood Management measures. This can include detailed flood risk modelling, but in many cases is grounded in applying best practice to deliver the strongest return on investment for the catchment and the wider community.

NFM measures we work with

Soil and land management
River and floodplain management
Woodland management
Run-off management
Coast and estuary management

Lake illustrating Natural Flood Management principles

For an example of Natural Flood Management in practice, see our case study on Natural Flood Management in Leicestershire, where catchment-scale measures contributed directly to reducing peak flows downstream. For a broader argument on the role of NFM in UK flood resilience, see our piece on working with nature and the rise of Natural Flood Management.

FPS Environmental delivers Flood Risk Assessments across the East Midlands, including in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and Leicester and Leicestershire as per the two case studies above, where rural catchments and mixed-character terrain often provide strong opportunities for NFM measures alongside traditional flood risk management approaches.