© Peter Smith Photography
Alkborough Flats Managed Realignment
Maslen Environmental was engaged by the Environment Agency (EA) to work with the Agency and its partners on The Alkborough Flats project, a project involving breaching the existing defences and flooding 440 hectares of intensively farmed agricultural land on the south bank of the Humber Estuary, adjacent to the village of Alkborough, creating the largest managed realignment site in Europe.
We were engaged to establish and manage the stakeholder participation and support the EA Project Manager. The structure established for the project involved a project management team comprising the principal partners; EA, Natural England and North Lincolnshire Council.
Stakeholder Interests
A Stakeholder Group with representatives from the wide and diverse range of interests was established and arising from this specialist Working Groups were formed to look at specific aspects such as farm management and site conservation design.
Stakeholder Group meetings were regularly held throughout the planning of the project, with attendance between 20 and 40 individuals. The wider community were kept informed of progress of the project through community consultation events held in the local village school and a regular newsletter posted to every household in the three neighbouring villages. Maslens prepared and organised all the communications associated with the project, including advocacy work, communicating the benefits of the project to potential funders such as the Regional Development Agency.
Potentially difficult messages associated with the project involved changes to farm management, breaching traditional defences, landscape change and tourism impacts. Working closely and continuously through the planning phase with the communities of interest resolved many of these difficulties.
Work with the farming community at Alkborough started early in the planning of the project involving joint work with the National Farmers Union researching options for the introduction of rare breeds to the site and visits to farms in similar situations elsewhere in the country. The farms have successfully adapted to the change.
To derive the wider objectives for the projects, particularly in the early stages of its planning in 2000, it was important that early community participation was achieved and that the project acted as a catalyst for new activities in the community, even though the physical works at Alkborough were likely to still be some years ahead. This was achieved through assisting the community with two Heritage Lottery Fund community projects.
