Creating benefits and riverside strategies: Thames Estuary 2100
How Thames Estuary 2100 (TE2100) will produce additional benefits for riverside communities through riverside strategies.
Applies to England
The most significant benefit of the Thames Estuary 2100 (TE2100) Plan is managing the risk of tidal flooding. This will make people and property safer. It will also avoid disruption, for example to:
- schools
- hospitals
- power supplies
- roads and rail lines
Managing flood risk as sea levels rise will mean reshaping our riversides. This is an opportunity to create additional benefits. We want to provide benefits to people, the economy and the environment. Some examples of benefits include:
- better opportunities for leisure and recreation, such as riverside paths
- improved health and wellbeing, for instance by creating more green space for people to enjoy
- creating new wildlife habitat
- natural carbon storage, for example by creating saltmarshes
- protecting landscapes
- protecting historic buildings, such as the Tower of London
The Environment Agency has worked with partners to agree the benefits we will create together. These benefits sit at the heart of the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan.
Why we need riverside strategies
The Thames Estuary 2100 Plan introduces the riverside strategy approach. This approach integrates upgrades to flood defences with riverside improvements and wider benefits.
Throughout much of the estuary, flood walls and embankments will need to be a metre or more higher by 2100. Without careful design, higher defences could restrict access to and views of the river. But with early planning, there are opportunities to upgrade defences and create good public spaces. These spaces can be green, accessible, vibrant and attractive, while providing flood protection.
Riverside strategies are visions for a stretch of riverside. Councils or other organisations can create riverside strategies. For instance, organisations interested in riverside development and improvement may produce a strategy.
Riverside strategies should be an integral part of statutory local planning. They can be standalone documents or form part of a Local Plan. You should create them in collaboration with local communities. They should include community ambitions for the riverside.
Riverside strategies need to be in place by 2030. This will enable us to plan future flood defence upgrades in line with these visions. In some places in the outer estuary, they will need to be in place earlier. This is because planning for defence raising will need to start before 2030.
Riverside strategies enable opportunities to upgrade flood defences through planned developments. By taking advantage of development opportunities, riverside strategies can reduce costs for defence raising.
Decisions taken in the 2020s will determine the quality of public space along the river for generations. Without a local vision, we will miss opportunities for potential benefits.
The City of London Corporation published the first riverside strategy in 2021. Read the City of London Riverside Strategy.
Embedding the riverside strategy approach
The Environment Agency is producing guidance for creating a riverside strategy. To support partners in developing a strategy we can provide information and review plans.
To successfully embed the riverside strategy approach, the requirements are to:
- engage with the local community so that plans for the riverside consider their needs
- engage with neighbouring sites or authorities to ensure that the flood defence line is continuous
- include Thames Estuary 2100 height and deadline requirements for upgraded flood defences
- include redesigning defences so that upgrades will improve the local area and make it greener
- identify land that will be required for future defence improvements and ensure this land will be available when needed
- provide space for habitat, work on defences and access to the river
- set out your approach to sustainability, nature recovery, and biodiversity and environmental net gain
- identify opportunities to create and enhance intertidal habitat
- enable people to have uninterrupted access to the riverside with views of the river
- include measures for the Thames Path to run continuously throughout the estuary