Winter 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to our Winter update. Inside you will find some of the highlights from our recent Community Resilience Day, a celebration of our Community Resilience Award winners and much more. Make note of our first diary dates of 2025 and take action to help us decide where to visit across the year in our mission to bring resilience to the whole county. 

If you have any queries about our newsletter please get in touch at somersetprepared@somerset.gov.uk. We would also welcome submissions or suggestions for future topics.

Best wishes, 

Somerset Emergency Planning, Response and Recovery team

& Somerset Prepared Partners

Flooded maize crop in Taunton

Resilience Roadshows

This autumn we held two very successful Resilience Roadshows at Mark and Monksilver. Each event included a Flood Warden session with the Environment Agency and marketplace stalls from Somerset Council, Avon and Somerset Police, EVAG, Wales and West Utilities and more.

 We will be holding four more roadshows in 2025. Our first will be on Tuesday 25 February at Neroche Hall, Bickenhall (between Taunton and Ilminster). This event will offer a resilience drop-in session from 4pm - 6pm, followed by a Flood Warden workshop that will run from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Please fill out this form to let us know if you would like to attend the Flood Warden session.

A Minehead roadshow will follow in the spring, but after that we need your help. We are looking for two other locations across the county. Is your area in need? Get in touch if you would like us to visit using this quick form. 

Somerset Prepared Roadshow at Monksilver

Somerset Prepared Community Resilience Awards

2024 saw some superb nominations for our annual Community Resilience Awards. We were delighted to celebrate the hard work of these proactive residents and groups at our recent Community Resilience Day. You can read all about the winners and runners-up here.

Spaxton hero Philip Ham being presented with his runners-up award by Robert Drewett, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Somerset

Somerset Prepared Community Resilience Day 

This year over 150 people attended our annual community resilience day, held at Bridgwater and Albion Rugby Football Club. If you missed it, you can catch up on some of the content and presentations on our webpages. May of the presenters have shared their slides so there is some great content to be explored. 

We are already planning for the 2025 event using the invaluable feedback from attendees. If you have any additional feedback or want to make a content, venue or other suggestion for 2025 please use the evaluation form to pass your thoughts on to the team. 

One of the highlights of the day was the creativity of our attendees, who brought resilience to life with poetry. Here is just one example as a little taster of the day. 

I’ve come here from Kingsbury Episcopi

Where Flooding is part of our history

To learn of resilience

And share the experience

Then flood risk will lesson, statistically.

Somerset Councillor and SRA Chair, Mike Stanton, welcomes the Resilience Day delegates to the event

Partner update - Somerset Rivers Authority

Launch of the Community Flood Action Fund

Small grants for works to reduce flooding are now being offered directly to Somerset communities by Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA).

The SRA's new Community Flood Action Fund will help people with good local knowledge of flooding problems take the initiative and get things done.

Up to £200,000 a year is being made available for practical actions with obvious benefits that can be achieved quite quickly.

The Fund is aimed at not-for-profit organisations, such as town and parish councils, charities, social enterprises and community benefit societies.

Councillor Mike Stanton, Chair of Somerset Rivers Authority, said: "The SRA is about working together with different people and different places, to get more done on local priorities. As it says in the SRA's Strategy, one quality that sets the SRA apart is its practical enthusiasm for ideas that come from communities for dealing with flooding problems.

 "With this new Fund, we're putting our money where our mouth is. We're expecting it to be very popular, we know lots of places across Somerset are interested, so please take a look. Help us to help you get things done."

Application packs for Community Flood Action Fund grants of between £3,000 and £20,000 are now available through the Grants section of the Somerset Rivers Authority website (https://www.somersetriversauthority.org.uk/grants).

The deadline for the first round of applications is 25 February 2025. Successful applicants will get funding from April. Three more funding rounds are due later in the year.

The Grants section of the SRA website also includes details of some other possible sources of Somerset flood-related funding, such as grants for training and equipment.

Royal Countryside Fund - new grant scheme

The RCF is launching a UK-wide Supporting Rural Communities grant programme on Friday 10th January 2025. This new differentiated funding will support transformative, community-led initiatives across the UK, unlocking the huge potential for positive change in rural communities. Its aim is to support innovative solutions that will “power up, not prop up” communities, inspiring change and encouraging economic vibrancy.

Organisations can apply for grants of up to £25,000 over a period of 24 months to deliver activities along the themes of:

• Keeping young people in the countryside

• Powering up rural communities

• Increasing environmental sustainability

• Building emergency resilience in rural areas.

Use the link above to find out more about this fantastic scheme. 

Partner update - Environment Agency

Recently, Storm Bert brought more than a month’s rainfall in one weekend, with nearly 70 river gauges across the country measuring record levels, including at locations in Wessex. Multiple town centres and businesses experienced the worst flooding in recent memory. Some of these businesses are already back up and running, while others may be closed for repairs for some time to come. In the lead up to Christmas, these impacts have been particularly devastating.

 Having a business continuity or emergency plan can make a real difference when it floods. In addition, adaptations can be made to premises that either keep water out, or reduce the impacts of flooding when it does occur. We wanted to share some resources that can help with preparation and recovery; please do circulate this to your colleagues and members.

 Business Support and Advice

 Mary Long-Dhonau has produced practical guides that help businesses take proactive steps to prepare for a flood, including a Business Flood Handbook and a Business Guide to Flood Resilience. Mary has also captured many case studies in her E-Mag, where businesses have adapted their premises with Property Flood Resilience to enable a swift return to trading.

• The Flood Hub is also a good source of information about business resilience and recovery.

• The National Flood Forum is a charity that offers support to those affected by flooding, including by providing advice on insurance. The Association of British Insurers also offers practical advice for businesses affected by flooding.   

• Gov.uk has a Business Flood Plan Checklist that can help with emergency planning.

 If flooding occurs outside of business hours, staff might not be on site. Flood Warnings are a crucial tool for knowing when action needs to be taken, including when there are impacts on transport routes that staff or deliveries might need to use.  You don’t have to live in the warning area to sign up for this free service – start by searching for your nearest town or city.

 Reporting Flooding

 Reporting flooding helps agencies to respond and prioritise recovery efforts, and helps capture the true costs of a flood, building a case for future interventions. We would encourage those affected to report property flooding as close to the event as possible: https://www.gov.uk/report-flood-cause

 You can get in touch with the local Environment Agency office at wessexenquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk. For support with Flood Warnings, preparedness, and resilience, you can contact the Flood Resilience team at floodwessex@environment-agency.gov.uk.

Partner update - Communities Prepared

The Groundwork South initiative, Communities Prepared, has been working hard this summer to launch its new content with topics like storms, introduction to resilience, and much more. Communities Prepared is a free national community resilience programme that equips communities with the knowledge and confidence to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a range of emergencies. After a pause of 8 weeks, our new programme is now up and running and we have successfully delivered well received new online sessions in October. Next month, you can sign up and attend our Community Emergency Planning workshop, our Cold weather awareness and preparedness workshop, and our Flood volunteer session. Please register for free and check our event page regularly to sign up for more sessions coming up. We also have self-led learning content that one can follow in their own time. And please, spread the word about our free offer! Our flyer is attached for anyone with an interest in emergency preparedness.

Partner update - Somerset Council

If you are aware of any households in your community facing hardship this winter, please check out this information about support that is available for food and energy bills. 

Somerset Wildlife Trust - Act to Adapt update

We have completed all Act to Adapt events for this year!

The recent Martock area workshop, funded by the Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA), marks the final event of 2024, and it was a massive success. Expecting ~30 attendees, we had more than 50 locals turn up from the project area.

 Over two and a half hours, the residents discussed Nature-based Solutions, local climate impacts, and the priorities for their community. Now the Climate Adaptation Team are using this information to create their Climate Adaptation Plan!

Upcoming  

2025 is already shaping up to be a jam-packed year for Act to Adapt! Hoping to begin work across five more areas, the Climate Adaptation Plans will continue to promote communities in working with nature, changing with the climate, and growing stronger together.

Finally - take 3 actions to help

Keeping it simple, here are three things you can do to make a difference for your community:

• Add this date to your diary: 25th Feb 2025. This is the date of our next Resilience Roadshow at Neroche Hall, Bickenhall. Reserve a spot at the Flood Warden workshop here. The drop-in runs 4 - 6pm and the Flood Warden Workshop is 6.30 - 8.30pm.

• Add a resilience-focused agenda item to your next Council meeting. Why not review your Emergency Plan or discuss attending one of our Emergency Plan writing workshops? Email us on Somersetprepared@somerset.gov.uk to find out more.

• Support household resilience as we go into the winter season - take a look at this useful link.

Featured images 

Here at somerset prepared we like to feature somerset in all its glory! Do you have an image of Somerset you would like to share? Send your images to somersetprepared@somerset.gov.uk for a chance to be featured!