Spanning over a decade of planning and construction, the scheme provides protection for more than 4,000 homes and over 1,000 businesses across the River Aire catchment in Leeds. It is also expected to secure over 33,000 jobs in the city, bolstering its resilience against climate change-related flooding.
Led by Leeds City Council in partnership with the Environment Agency, the scheme offers a one-in-200-year level of protection, incorporating climate change allowances.
The initiative was driven by the catastrophic flooding caused by Storm Eva in December 2015, which left parts of Leeds underwater, resulting in £36.8 million in direct damages and over £500 million in recovery costs for the wider region.
Officials hailed the completion of the scheme as a major milestone in securing the city's future, providing peace of mind to residents and businesses while supporting Leeds' long-term economic growth.
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The Leeds FAS has been carried out in two phases. The first phase, completed in 2017, saw the creation of new moveable weir gates across the river at Crown Point and Knostrop together with 4.5km of new flood walls and embankments.
The second phase, covering the city centre and upstream, has been much larger in scope. Construction began in 2019, with engineering and infrastructure works carried out along 14 further kilometres of the river from Leeds City Station upstream along the A65 Kirkstall Road corridor to Apperley Bridge.
The scheme uses the natural environment to help protect against flooding, in one of the largest and most innovative natural flood management projects seen anywhere in the UK.
The range of measures includes:
• Planting of 750,000 trees and soil and land management measures across 1,700 football fields' worth of land (1,240 ha) in the upper Aire catchment.
• The creation of vast new areas of habitat for wildlife, improved water quality and farmland as well as restoring previous habitats.
• The installation of fish and eel passes at the moveable weirs in the city centre contributing to otters and salmon being seen in parts of the river for the first time in over 200 years.
• The creation of a 2.4-hectare wetland habitat on Kirkstall Meadows.
• The planting of 90,000 trees and shrubs throughout the Leeds area.
A further key economic benefit of the scheme includes bringing land previously unsuitable for development due to flood risk back into potential use, opening up significant areas of land to support the growth of the city with estimated regeneration benefits of £774 million over ten years and potentially more than 3,000 new jobs.
The protection offered by the scheme also offers increased resilience for key infrastructure in Leeds including power supplies, communications networks, and key travel routes.
