Start here...
Overview:
Welcome to the River Pinn catchment overview page. This page provides background information to flooding along the River Pinn and a summary of the work being done to reduce the flood risk to homes, businesses and infrastructure along the river.
This page will help you find the project area(s) which are of most interest to you. Please also fill in our survey at the bottom of the page to help us understand your views.
The River Pinn catchment is in the west of the Greater London area. It flows through the London Boroughs of Harrow and Hillingdon before joining the Fray’s River (part of the River Colne) in Uxbridge. The Pinn is joined by several smaller rivers along its length, including the Woodridings Stream, the Joel Street Farm Ditch and the Cannon Brook.
What are we doing?
Multiple partners are working together with local communities across the Pinn catchment to better understand the causes of flooding and identify actions that could reduce the risk of flooding in the future. At the moment these projects are led by the Environment Agency or the London Borough of Hillingdon depending on the location. We are also working closely with the London Borough of Harrow as well as Thames Water. For more information on flood risk roles and responsibilities, please follow this link.
Why are we doing this?
Flooding can have a devastating impact on people's lives. Communities in the River Pinn catchment experience frequent flooding so there is a real need to come up with solutions that can help to reduce this risk.
What has happened so far?
Work to better understand the flood risk in this catchment has been progressing for a number of years, and the timeline below shows the key flood events and pieces of work which have led us to this point.
Engaging with communities:
This portal includes information about all of the projects being progressed across the catchment to manage flood risk. Some of these are led by the Environment Agency, and some are led by the London Borough of Hillingdon.
The map below shows the location of these individual projects so you can find the ones which are of most interest to you. The shortcuts below take you to each of these individual project pages:
What have we done so far?
During March 2018 over 180 people attended three public drop-in sessions in Ruislip, Pinner and Uxbridge. This was an opportunity for the public and other local stakeholders to look at the proposals for the River Pinn projects and discuss them with the project teams. It also provided an opportunity for the public to tell us how flooding has impacted them in the past. The public consultation led by the Environment Agency was available online for 6 weeks and we received over 120 responses from the public on the project plans. Further detail is provided in the consultation response report at the side of this page.
Since 2018, we have been keeping communities up-to-date through project webpage updates, emails to our mailing lists and meetings with local community groups.
The table below summarises some of the key headlines from our 2018 consultation, and how we have adjusted our approach to engagement since then. We will continue to adapt our engagement as we receive feedback through this website and as we further develop the project plans.
| You said | We did |
|---|---|
87% of those who responded confirmed that they supported some sort of form of project to reduce flood risk | We have continued to progress the projects and engage with the public on the options through our project webpages. This new engagement portal will allow us to continue to enhance this engagement as our options become clearer and we are able to share more detail. |
More information is needed on the options in order to make a decision about whether to support them or not | Project webpages for the Environment Agency projects were launched in summer 2019. These contained the latest information and progress, including a section on option development. Project partners are continuing to provide comments and ongoing feedback on options in monthly project progress meetings. We have launched this engagement portal to enable us to consult on options for each of the projects once we have more detail to share. |
Public events need to be better publicised as some respondents weren’t aware of our drop in events in 2018 | We have continued to build up our mailing list over the past 3 years and will continue to develop it through this portal. When we advertise future events, we will put more emphasis on making sure that we publicise them through as many different mediums as possible. Social Media was the most effective in 2018, so we will make better use of these platforms in future. |
| The project name "East Ruislip" wasn't reflective of the way the community referred to their local area | In consultation with the project partners who raised this in 2019, we changed the project name to "Ruislip - Park Wood and Pinn Meadows" which it was agreed was a more suitable name for the project |
What are we planning to do next?
- We will continue to develop our projects to manage flood risk, and engage communities at key points in their development. This portal will give us the functionality we need to be able to do this effectively during the current Coronavirus working arrangements. By signing up to be kept informed you will receive an automatic notification when new information is shared.
- We will continue to carry out wider engagement with communities to make sure that everyone who is potentially affected by the options to manage flood risk has access to the latest information.
- We will continue to work with communities and other partners to secure funding for these projects.
For more information about engagement activities for the specific project areas, please visit the dedicated project pages (linked above).
Why your opinion matters
We are committed to ensuring we gather views and feedback as these projects evolve. This will ensure the proposed options that are effective in reducing flood risk take into account the views of communities across the catchment who will benefit from, or be impacted by anything that is delivered on the ground.
We will be developing the information on this portal over time, as we have more detail about options to share. Please register to be kept informed about the project(s) you’re interested in.
All responses received through this portal will be recorded and analysed. Where it is possible, we will use your feedback to help develop the design of options, or to help identify ways to address concerns about the impacts of the projects.
Please do contact the project team(s) if you would like to share any local knowledge or have any questions. The contact details for the specific projects are on the dedicated project pages, but for general queries please contact us through this portal using the link at the side.
Useful information
Reporting flooding:
Call the Environment Agency via the incident hotline (0800 80 70 60) to report:
- a blockage, for example a fallen tree
- collapsed or badly damaged river or canal banks
- unusual changes in river flow
- flooding from the sea or a main river - you can check which are main rivers
After an event, where there has been significant flooding (internal property flooding) the councils have a duty to undertake a Flood Investigation so please report issues to them.
For Hillingdon you can find more information at https://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/flooding or contact them on flooding@hillingdon.gov.uk.
Please report flooding of any type to Hillingdon Council using the form on their website here.
For Harrow you can find more information at https://www.harrow.gov.uk/environment-parks/flood-advice or contact then on infrastructure@harrow.gov.uk.
The councils will ask if you are happy to share the data you provide with the Environment Agency and other partner organisations in order that we can better understand the flooding issues.
It is also important, if you have been flooded from a public sewer to complete Thames Water's online sewer flooding questionnaire here and return it to them at the address on the form.
Flood insurance:
The insurance industry launched the Flood Re scheme in April 2016 to help households in flood risk areas to find affordable home insurance.
Flood Re is a joint initiative between the Government and insurers. Its aim is to make the flood cover part of household insurance policies more affordable.
More information on how this works is available on the Flood Re website: https://www.floodre.co.uk/
