As many villages in Warwickshire were seriously flooded during 1998 & 2007 and now many have flood action groups, Warwickshire County Council are inviting local people to the Warwickshire Flood Summit, taking place on Saturday 1 April in Stratford-upon-Avon. The event will start at 10am and will finish around 4:30pm.  Building on the successes of the 2014 and 2015 Flood Summits, the organisers are looking to engage with even more members of the public with the 2017 event, by making it an open public event.

The main objectives are three-fold:

1. To raise awareness of flood risk and promote realistic expectations of the role of Flood Risk Management Authorities, leading to action on the part of residents and businesses, therefore leading to greater resilience.

2. To let people know that they are not alone, through displaying the positive community resilience work that has been achieved throughout the county.

3. To gathering views from the public, especially with respect to the implementation of the Warwickshire Local Flood Risk Management Strategy one year after its adoption by Cabinet in April 2016

The event will be held in two locations within Stratford.  Firstly, in the Stratford Arts House (Rother Street, Stratford, CV37 6LU), where there will be stalls from various partners, split into various themes (planning and development, maintenance, community resilience etc).  People will have the chance to speak to staff from the various agencies (EA, Severn Trent etc) and learn more about what they do to manage the flood risk in Warwickshire.

The second venue will be along Waterside, next to the RSC.  Here we will have an outside public display area.  On display will be a new temporary flood defence barrier from the Environment Agency along with one of their emergency response vehicles, a Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service boat and equipment, the National Flood Forum information trailer, and some WROC instant response vehicles.  As with the indoor exhibition, staff from the relevant agencies will be there to answer any questions the public may have.

At 3pm there will be a brief presentation on the theme of the Flood Summit – ‘is the Warwickshire Flood Strategy working?’ – followed by a Question & Answer session with a panel of experts from major flooding agency

This should be an extremely productive event, with a great turnout by our partners expected, and hopefully a very strong public attendance.  We hope to see you there on the day.

Our own Heather Shepherd, Flood Recovery and Community Support Specialist, was talking about the importance of flood action groups on a short film published for a short amount of time.