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Carlisle has a history of flooding with large scale flood events occurring in 1968, 2005 and 2015 flooding both homes, businesses and impacting the wider community. Following the 2005 flooding, the Environment Agency built a new Flood Risk Management Scheme on the Rivers Eden, Petteril and Caldew. The new scheme was delivered in two phases and completed in 2010. This scheme consists of a combination of flood walls, embankments, storage areas and pumping stations and was tested in June 2012 and May 2013 when the defences prevented properties in the city from flooding.
In 2015 Storm Desmond caused devastating flooding around the county with Carlisle again being severely affected. Flood water by-passed and overtopped the existing defences along the Rivers Eden and Petteril flooding over a thousand residential and business properties across the city and affecting road and rail infrastructure, power and utilities.
The Environment Agency’s aim is to improve the level of flood protection to as many properties as possible across the city and design and build an improved Flood Risk Management Scheme that will provide protection against flood levels reached in Storm Desmond and include allowances for climate change. The scheme will be delivered in 3 phases providing better flood protection and greater resilience to residential and business properties.
The videos below include visualisations of how flooding affected areas of Carlisle in December 2015 and the proposed flood scheme:
