Public Funding for Climate Vision Limited

Blocked drains and leaf litter preventing efficient drain/gully performance are common themes that arise from surface water flooding events. Drain clearing is the responsibility of the local authority. It is difficult to enhance the current service economically to provide additional time and location critical clearing activities within existing contracts.Climate Vision has been piloting and aims to roll out to a National Toolkit a project that works in three flood affected areas of Cornwall, training the Probation Service's Community Payback Scheme offenders to clear leaf litter and other debris from the road drainage system in settlements, at key times and learning to manage it through composting or disposal. This reduces the risk of future flooding, provide an opportunity for offenders to attain new skills & qualifications, develop community spirit and remove the waste to produce a community asset in the compost, as a soil conditioner in parks (not associated with food production) and thus also reduce landfill costs.Two thirds of the costs of the 2007 floods in Hull were caused by surface water damage, requiring preventative action (Defra, 2007). It is extremely challenging to economically enhance the current drain clearing contracts in a focused way. Local Authorities can benefit from unique data gathering by Climate Vision who now has an opportunity to build a template for a repeat of the flood prevention Pilot, in direct response to the Pitt report recommendations. Climate Vision enabled Devon & Cornwall Probation Trust to benefit from previous work during the original Pilot to affect the individual reform of offenders. Throughout the original Pilot, the Lostwithiel community visited the offenders while at work and thanked them and told them about their flooding experiences. This has made a positive impact on those working. The Pilot aided calls for the public to be made more aware of the risk of flooding by Government in order to minimise re-occurrence through direct precautionary actions via a public information campaign (Defra, 2007). This Pilot also helped to enable residents to engage in positive work to improve the immediate situation, it attracted media interest and provided at the time a valuable ‘good news’ story. The first pilot in one town created 3 tones of compost used by local residents. The current pilot in 3 areas has created over 7 tonnes of leaves already that would have otherwise blocked drains.