Kennet and Pang Flooding

In January 2024 homes in towns and villages in the Kennet Catchment suffered internal flooding at a scale last seen in 1947.  With climate change, changes in landuse and increasing urbanisation flood risk is expected to increase significantly. In 2007 similar levels of flooding were experienced in Pangbourne. Climate change models are predicting that intense cloudburst rainfall will increase, resulting in increase in property flooding.

In chalk catchments flood water can come from rivers (fluvial flooding), aquifers (ground water flooding), rainfall  (pluvial or surface water flooding) or all three. 

Flooding information

People concerned about flood risk can find up to date river level and groundwater level information on the CEH UK Water Resources Portal or the Environment Agency Hydrology Data Explorer. These sites cover the whole UK.
Anyone can sign up to Environment Agency Flood alerts here.
For more localised information Flood Alleviation UK have created the dashboards below.

Flood dashboards

Marlborough

Marlborough Town Council Flood Dashbord 

Pang 

Pang Valley Flood Forum Dashboard

Natural Flood Management

ARK has designed and created several natural flood management projects that create space for water in the landscape and slow the flow of water through the catchment. These projects reduce the fluvial flood risk in downstream towns and villages. 

Examples include the a river realignment and flood plain reconnection in the water meadow upstream from Ogbourne St Andrew and the realignment of the River Shalbourne upstream of Hungerford.

We have also worked with schools across the catchments to create rain gardens that slow and store rainwater to improve our resilience to cloudburst rainfall.