Exmouth has a long history of tidal flooding. In 1960, during the worst recorded event, flooding occurred twice and almost 1,000 properties were affected.
The Exmouth Tidal Defence scheme is a £12 million scheme to improve flood defences in Exmouth. The scheme will reduce the risk of tidal flooding to over 1,400 residential and 400 commercial properties.
Following the allocation of funding in 2017 and a lengthy period of design and review, full planning permission was granted in August 2019 for the installation of new flood walls and gates, plus associated
landscaping for the flood defence works.
The need for a new tidal defence scheme for Exmouth was initially identified as part of a flood risk management strategy for the whole of the Exe Estuary.
The scheme includes new flood walls, ground raising, floodgates and property flood resilience measures along the sea front and estuary. Following a consultation in 2016, it was agreed that the tidal defences should reduce tidal flood risk from the current 4 per cent chance of happening in any one year (also known as 1 in 25-year flood event), to a 0.5 per cent chance of happening in any one year (1 in 200-year flood event).
The approach taken, is to build flood defences that can be easily improved in the future, which means that Exmouth should not need further tidal defence improvements until 2045.
In support of the flood defence scheme, Flood Control International (FCI) was engaged at an early stage to have the responsibility for the design, client design co-ordination, manufacture, split visit delivery and installation of 26 floodgates across the project. Additionally, end-user and local flood warden training on floodgate deployment was required towards the end of the scheme.
In some areas, especially across the main traffic routes, sliding gates were chosen, due to the space constraints for swinging hinged gates; The sliding gates vary in size, between 6.8m and 13m in length, with a maximum height of 1.15m.The largest gate in the whole defence scheme is a double leaf lift-hinge steel version, at almost 15m long x 0.9m high, making it the longest gate of its type in the UK.
Many of the gates are timber clad, in order to provide a suitable aesthetic for this historic and picturesque area, but perhaps most importantly, almost all of the gates have a perfectly flat, DDA compliant threshold, for ease of access and in particular for pedestrian areas, where sloped sills or steps could not be used.This type of threshold can only be achieved by using a lift hinged type gate design and is one major advantage and a key feature of FCI lift-hinged floodgates.
Excellent feedback was received from the client concerning the
quality of the gates, their simplicity, and how quickly and easily they can be deployed
