Cockermouth Floods

• Flood management scheme


  A strategy developed to protect an area from future flooding
• Cockermouth


  • Sits at the confluence of two rivers (River Derwent and River Cocker)
  • Located at the base of hills
  • Prone to flooding risk due to two rivers meeting
• A large storm arrived across the Atlantic, causing heavy rainfall on the hills
• The heavy rainfall led to a large overland flow, causing widespread flooding in Cockermouth
• The flooding caused £100 million worth of damage to the town, businesses, properties, and affected wildlife
• One person, PC Bill Barker, lost their life trying to protect people from crossing a bridge over the River Derwent
• Flood management strategy developed

  1. Focus on hard engineering

  2. Building flood walls with various designs

  3. Dredging the riverbed to increase capacity
• Flood walls


  • Some have glass tops to allow views
  • Some have automatic raising barriers
  • Expensive to build
• Dredging


  • Digs out the riverbed to increase capacity
  • Damages the riverbed and affects species like fish
• The combination of flood defences has proved successful in protecting Cockermouth from future flooding, although some people don't like the appearance of the large flood walls