The community came together to stop flooding – and failed: “There is only one winner from all of this”

L ast night, in a meeting room in my local library, myself and five other people held a moment of silence to mark the end of four and a half years of work trying to build some swales and detention basins.

 

Present were myself, two of my neighbours, two officers from the Waltham Forest Council Highways team, and our local Councillor. It was a quiet event. There was no shouting, no tears, just resignation that the sustainable drainage system (SuDS) scheme that we’d all invested countless hours developing and trying to get approval for was not going ahead.

The road that led us to that room began on a Sunday afternoon in July 2021, when a month of rain fell on my neighbourhood in just two hours. I still remember the moment a neighbour sent out a panicked message on our street WhatsApp group asking for help to manage the torrent of water threatening to fill her kitchen.

 

My husband was one of a dozen neighbours who rushed over and swept water into a drain away from the house for over an hour. I stayed at home with the children, watching six inches of rain pile up against the glass doors at the back of my house. There would have been more, but much of the water that would have come into my house probably ended up in the the clubhouse of the local Cricket, Tennis and Squash Club, which is immediately behind my house.

 

Memories of that day routinely flick through my mind like a slide show. Traffic cones from nearby roadworks floating down the middle of my street. A drain at the end of the road surcharging six feet into the air. The sight of the water against the back of the house. And then later: messages and videos of the road my childrens’ school is on, just downhill from us, where the school and houses were knee deep in a mix of rainwater and sewage.

But this essay isn’t about this event. It’s about what came after. What followed was almost a perfect story of a community coming together to tackle a complex environmental problem.

Some of the key moments as I recall them: A neighbour organised a meeting of concerned neighbours in our local community garden where we sat, outside and suitably socially distanced as per the norm in covid times, and talked about what to do. There was little progress until one day, miraculously, an offer came from the council, to formalise our group into a community Flood Action Group, funded by the council and Thames Water, organised by the National Flood Forum (NFF) with support from one of their engagement officers.

 

We began to learn about where the water came from and where it goes. The water that floods our homes is from a tributary of a historic watercourse called the Fillebrook, itself a tributary of the River Lee. They run all around this neighbourhood, feeding into the Fillebrook which is now part of the sewer system. We also began to learn about surface water management; how it works, who is responsible for what, our rights and responsibilities.

 

NFF and Thames 21 successfully applied on our behalf to the Mayor of London’s Grow Back Greener Fund for a grant to do feasibility work on a potential SuDS scheme to protect our homes and the Club.

 

Following the feasibility report, the council integrated our planned scheme into the borough’s wider plans to address flooding across our area. They then successfully applied to the Environment Agency for a six-figure sum to do the detailed design and implementation of the scheme.

 

 

Cue another slide show of memories: signing my name on a sheet on paper committing to formally be a member of the Flood Action Group. A neighbour breaking down in tears during a meeting. Walking the lane behind our houses with a consultant, explaining how the water flows. Sitting in an airless room on the first floor of the club trying hard to understand technical drawings. And all along the way, meetings, emails, letters. Endless WhatsApp messages. Consultation events. Conversations on doorsteps. Leaflets.

 

Let me not forget amidst this, the undercurrent of fear as ever present as the ticking of a clock. The sound of rain on the rooftop prompting anxiety. Putting sandbags at the back of the garage and making sure they were still in place regularly. Installing three water butts. Digging a hole in the garden and filling it with gravel. Downloading multiple apps to monitor rainfall. Wondering if we should sell the house. Stopping, breathing, remembering that we were taking action and everything was going to be okay.

 

At long last, two planning applications were submitted. One for a detention basin and swale on Epping Forest land at the top of our road, land managed by the Corporation of London. And one for two other interventions: re-profiling a laneway behind our homes and reinstating a historic drainage ditch, and building a detention basin and swale on the sport club’s land.

 

It was a lovely little scheme, designed both to protect our homes and the clubhouse but with the additional benefit that it would help our neighbours further down the catchment. The detention basins and swales would hold as much water as possible during an extreme rainfall event, keeping it away from properties and out of sewers. The work on the laneway would direct the waterflow away from our homes and move the water to the drains. The entire thing was to be funded by the grant from the Environment Agency.

 

I let myself dream not just of preventing flooding but other benefits the scheme would bring as well. Of SuDS designed to also work as children’s play areas, of the lane behind our house turning from a hotspot for anti-social behaviour and fly tipping to becoming a productive blue-green oasis. We could use the project to reinvigorate the lane, get people using it again, enhance biodiversity.

 

But none of this was to be.

 

On a quiet and dry evening in the autumn of 2025, the Management Committee of the Cricket, Tennis and Squash Club met, in person and online, to vote on whether to approve the construction of a swale and basin on their land. The final vote was 8 to 5 against the proposal.

 

 

Late in 2025, the Corporation of London informed the London Borough of Waltham Forest that they would not be supporting the Council’s planning application to build a swale on the Epping Forest Land.

 

Around the same time, Waltham Forest Council’s local planning authority indicated that they did not support the second application for the works to the laneway and club. Their reasons focused on environmental protection of the land in the lane, as far as I understand. In addition, the arboreal consultant for the council visited the laneway and decided that a tree growing on the border of the laneway land and the Club should be given a tree protection order which would further restrict the ability to do works there.

 

Objections ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous: Epping Forest is an ancient woodland, and our timeframe for assessing what can be built on it must be considered in centuries, not years; We have a preference for a no-dig approach; We do not believe your modelling is correct; Can you show me a video of water coming off our land onto yours? If not, I don’t believe that it does; But we haven’t flooded again since then; You are destroying a treasured community resource; Thames Water should be fixing things; We’re concerned about safeguarding. You can drown in 2 inches of water; and my personal favourite: “I’ve done some research and this is a scheme being promoted by property developers.”

 

 

And so, our little SuDS has died. One planning application has been rejected, and the other will be withdrawn. And I’m left reflecting on what to take away from this experience. I tend to think at a large scale, to focus on the big picture because that’s what I do professionally. In that vein, there is so much I could say. I could write about fear of change, the pitfalls of volunteer-led engagement, the challenges of climate communication, the hopeless futility of trying to govern nature, the insufficiency of public resources to address the impacts of climate change.

 

Instead, I find myself asking: what is actually going to happen because we did nothing? What are the consequences of our inaction? Which begs the question - consequences for who? Here, now, I can think only locally, so that is where I will focus my reflections.

 

For me and my immediate neighbours, the consequences are negligible for now. Extreme flooding events like the one in July 2021 are becoming more frequent, but they are still unusual. And we can protect ourselves from them. Our houses are far enough up the catchment that we can use flood resilience measures to prevent flooding. And if the worst happens, there is a group of us who are are prepared to respond, support our neighbours. Given the sports club’s opposition to the scheme, it’s ironic that the building at greatest risk is likely their clubhouse.

 

For our local community, this project has had both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, it strengthened bonds among those of us who worked together on it. At the same time, it has left a lasting divide between those who fought for the scheme and those who ultimately brought it to an end. Relationships between residents and the sports club are now strained, and those tensions are already surfacing in other matters. If another flooding event occurs, there will likely be significant anger directed at those who prevented the scheme from going forward.