Work on Severn Trent’s £76m sustainable flood resilience project in Mansfield is due to end in April.

Since 2022, it has has been working to turn the town into what it calls a sustainable flood resilient community.

The major project, the first of its kind in the UK, has seen a variety of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) installed.

This has been designed to help the town’s sewer networks cope better during bad weather by storing rainwater or infiltrating it into the ground.

Now, almost 300 SuDS have been installed across the town, with 340 due to be installed by the end of the project.

In total, the SuDS have capacity to store an extra 30 million litres of water, saving it from overwhelming the network and causing flooding across the town, slowly returning the water to sewers once water levels have dropped.

Severn Trent said with the project being the first of its kind in the UK, it has been trialling different methods and interventions over the last few years, meaning Mansfield will have a huge role to play in how SuDS are used across other towns and cities.

Adam Boucher, operations lead for Mansfield Green Recovery, said: “Over the last three years we have spent a lot of time in Mansfield to help protect communities from flooding. We’d like to first of all thank everyone in Mansfield for their patience and support while we worked on their roads and outside their homes.

“As we’re nearing the end of the project, we have already seen the benefits from the SuDS, as people’s properties are better protected during adverse weather conditions.

“Moving forward, Mansfield will be used as a best practice for other projects like this across the UK and globally.

“Being from Mansfield myself, I’m particularly proud of the role it’ll play.”

For more information on the Mansfield sustainable flood resilience project, visit the Severn Trent website.