About Project Groundwater

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Project Groundwater is a six-year programme working with communities in up to nine high-risk flood areas of the Chiltern Hills and Berkshire Downs. It is led by Buckinghamshire Council in partnership with five other local authorities and Flood Community Groups.

Communities are discovering more about local groundwater and its flooding risk. In time, they will be better prepared to manage flooding with alerts, shared knowledge and innovative ideas to help minimise disruption and damage. They will also learn how to make local areas more resilient to floods in the future.

Findings from Project Groundwater, which will include a study into the mental health impacts of flooding, are set to benefit up to 200 communities and 70,000 properties at risk of groundwater flooding across the region. Learning will also be shared nationally for the benefit of communities everywhere.

Map showing the nine pilot communities in our six local authority areas

Funding

A Government Policy Statement in 2020 allocated a record £5.2 billion investment in England's Flood and Coastal Defence programme to be allocated over a six-year period. It aims to better protect over 300,000 properties and reduce the national flood risk by up to 11% by 2027.

The Environment Agency and the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published their responses to the Policy Statement.

Defra has released the £200 Million Flood and Coastal Innovation programmes, which includes:

Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme

Coastal Transition Accelerator Programme

Adaptation Pathways Programme

Buckinghamshire Council secured £7.3m funding from Defra's Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation programme for Project Groundwater - focused on improving understanding, raising awareness, and increasing resilience to groundwater flooding.

Vision

Project Groundwater will forever transform how communities prepare and respond to groundwater flooding.

Mission

By working together, Project Groundwater is developing innovative and sustainable solutions to groundwater flooding that will:

  • Share understanding and increase awareness
  • Actively monitor flood events and improve warning systems
  • Prepare communities to respond to and withstand flood events

Values

As a community-focused partnership, Project Groundwater is underpinned and directed by four core principles:

1. Collaboration

So that those impacted by groundwater flooding can be at the heart of everything we do.

2. Innovation

Because communities deserve the best service possible which existing systems and technology may not achieve.

3. Sustainability

Because the risk of groundwater flooding will continue into the future.

4. Transparency

Because we understand the real-world impacts of groundwater flooding and want to maintain people's trust in the project.

Project Groundwater is committed to embedding its values right across the partnership. Offering open and collaborative ways of working and embracing diverse backgrounds, skills, and personalities, has been essential to recognise that innovation isn’t a learned skill and that everyone can make an equal contribution. This approach has helped to foster trust across all 36 partner organisations involved in the Project.

Core Team

Project Groundwater partnership at our 2024 Annual Summit

Alex Beckett

Project Groundwater Executive

Alex Becket joined us this year, to replace Karen Fisher who continues to support the project in a consultancy capacity. Alex has been managing Buckinghamshire Council's flood risk management teams since September 2024 and has a keen interest in sustainability. He drafted the Council's Climate Change and Air Quality Strategy, and mobilised and managed a programme to plant 543,000 trees. He also secured a £0.5 million grant from Defra to upcycle and electrify a refuse collection vehicle, and implemented a £1.9 million 'Energy Doctor' scheme that involves the installation of low-cost resource efficiency measures in low-income homes. He is looking forward to bringing his expertise to Project Groundwater.

Jed Ramsay

Project Groundwater Project Lead

With almost 25 years of experience across all types of projects, Jed has worked extensively in flood risk, rivers, and the environmental field. He has led numerous projects, from designing and building water supplies in the tropical rainforest; to installing navigation facilities; to building formal flood defences. In addition, Jed has also played a hands-on role in coordinating responses to major floods and served as an on-call firefighter for several years. Jed helped to write the bid to secure the funding for Project Groundwater, and now leads the core team and over 35 partner organisations to ensure that the Project delivers on its objectives.

Luciano Lopes

Project Groundwater Project Manager

Luciano is a skilled Project Manager with deep expertise in planning, scheduling and presenting project status to key stakeholders. Drawing on vast experience interpreting data and translating technical details for executive teams, he ensures plans stay on track for on-time, on-budget delivery. Luciano was brought into his current role to lead cross-functional coordination, maintain comprehensive documentation, govern budgets and resources, and keep leadership updated on risks/mitigations. His analytical capabilities and solutions-focused approach enable him to keep complexity behind the scenes while showcasing clarity to partners.

Katie Hargrave Smith

Project Groundwater Communications and Engagement Officer

Katie brings experience from her environmental social sciences degree and climate engagement background to her position as Communications and Engagement Officer for Project Groundwater. She strives to ensure that all content and activities on the project are accessible to all. Her focus is on raising awareness and promoting understanding of groundwater flooding. She also assists in coordinating all our efforts to interact with communities, ensuring that we learn from individuals who have firsthand experience with groundwater flooding.

Andrew Waugh

Strategic Flood Management Team Leader, and Resilience Workstream manager

Andrew has worked in Flood Risk Management for over 11 years in various roles for the Environment Agency and Buckinghamshire Council. Andrew is the Strategic Flood Management Team Leader for Buckinghamshire Council. He manages the statutory functions of the LLFA and works on building relationships with partners and local communities to manage investigations following flood incidents and deliver flood risk management projects. He has a particular interest in helping communities and residents reduce their own risk and builds on this to project manage the Resilience workstream of Project Groundwater.

Alex Totty

Project Manager for the Placemaking Workstream

Alex works for Buckinghamshire Council as a Sustainable Drainage Officer and has a keen interest in Natural Flood Management (NFM). He brings his knowledge of the planning system and NFM to the Placemaking Workstream, project managing the Nature-Based Solutions and Planning sub-workstreams.

Organisation and governance

Project Groundwater’s work is developed and delivered by a range of partner organisations supporting a core team within Buckinghamshire Council.

Overseen by a programme board, the project is organised into nine technical workstreams which work in close collaboration.

An Engagement and Communications workstream and a Research workstream, provide overarching support across the project. This includes raising awareness, building and sharing understanding, and translating technical information into accessible language for the communities.

A Governance workstream monitors delivery and performance, oversees collaborations with other projects and drives legacy planning.

Our Network

2024

Project Groundwater is one of three groundwater flooding projects funded by Defra's Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation programme. 2024 saw us increase our collaboration with Greater Lincolnshire, and Northumbria, and formalise our connection with a shared identity as the Project Groundwater Network. We continued to share ideas and drive new initiatives throughout the year, including plans for research on the impacts of flooding on mental health, and a one-stop portal for all flood warning systems.

At the end of 2024, the Network began an exciting collaboration with Aardman studios, home of Wallace and Gromit, to develop a short animation to help raise awareness of groundwater flooding, and the importance of being prepared.

2025

Next year, with the increased awareness that the Aardman film will bring, we hope to connect with more industry professionals and communities, under a new banner of Let’s Talk Groundwater Flooding.

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Find out more about Project Groundwater