New wetlands planned to reduce flood risk after storm review

Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Areas of wetland will be created on to help lessen the impacts of flooding in Welsh county, councillors have been told.

At a special meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Economic Development and Environmental Management scrutiny committee on Tuesday, February 10, councillors received a report which explained how the authority is  planning to deal with  future flooding events.

The report provided councillors with details of the work been done to recover from the flooding and landslides caused by Storm Bert in November 2024 and  what lessons have been learnt since that emergency.

Director of neighbourhoods and environment  Mark Thomas who took the helm at the department several months after Storm Bert, told councillors that there had been a “catastrophic failure” in terms of the council’s “level of preparedness” to deal with the incident.

Mr Thomas said: “We had the Cwmtillery tip slip and significant flooding in some of our communities, notably Tredegar, Llanhilleth and Cwm.

“With Llanhilleth and Cwm we were lucky to get away with zero fatalities.”

He explained that the council needed to improve the service resilience especially as these storms are expected to be more frequent due to Climate Change.

To help the process he said that Local Partnerships, had been commissioned to conduct an independent review into the council’s flood response.

Recommendations

Local Partnerships is a public sector organisation jointly owned by the Welsh Government, Local Government Association and the UK Government’s Treasury Department which provides expert advice and resources to help public services.

They had provided 19 recommendations for the council to address.

These included gully/culvert cleaning, better communication, more sandbags, and to look at creating wetland and building floodgates to stop the fast flow of water.

Long term plans

Cllr Gareth Alban Davies (Independent – Rassau and Garnlydan) said: “With looking at identifying wetlands, is there anything about tree planting under consideration?

“In the longer term it might help alleviate some of the upland areas that are causing problems in the lowland areas”

Mr Davies said: “There are couple of areas of upland peatland that we’re looking at in Torfaen.

“We’re looking to  restore those in collaboration with Blaenau Gwent.

“They are highly effective in holding water in the landscape and flattening that peak of water flow into our communities and water courses.

“We found as well in some of the ravines that come down into our communities, planting willow helps to retain water and slows the flow.”

He added that the councils are looking to partners with charities that are expert in water retention schemes.

Steep narrow valleys

Mr Thomas said: “Some areas are lucky enough to have sacrificial areas of land and flood plains and allow those to flood and hold water back.

“We’re not blessed with that in Blaenau Gwent, we have steep narrow valleys – but we’re looking at how to be more innovative.”

Cllr Davies asked whether resources during storm emergencies are shared with other authorities?

He pointed out that Blaenau Gwent had helped Monmouthshire council during their recent flooding incidents in November due to Storm Clara.

Help each other

Also Blaenau Gwent now works very closely with Torfaen council and shares a chief executive and several other senior members of staff.

Mr Davies said: “One of the improvements made is when emergency response teams are planning for these (weather) events, we do so with Torfaen as well, so we have that mutual assistance straight away whether flooding or snow storms.”

He added that he was “pushing” for the councils to help each other as much as possible in this arena.

And this extends to the to the aftermath of storms to help return services to normal as quickly as possible.

The report will go before a Cabinet meeting later this month.