RIVER MEDWAY & WETLANDS RECOVERY PROJECT

PROJECT OVERVIEW

SCALE: 100 km watercourse and 30,177 ha water basin

LOCATION: Middle & Lower Medway Catchment and tributaries (River Len, Leybourne, Ditton and Loose Streams)

CORRIDOR ROLE: Provides water quality improvements for the River Medway and large-scale water storage and attenuation, translating upstream infiltration into flood-risk reduction for urban areas downstream.

CORE INTERVENTIONS

• Wetland restoration and creation

• Floodplain reconnection

• Wet grassland management

• Riparian and wet woodland planting and restoration

• Riparian buffers

• Reduced chemical applications

• Run-off attenuation

• Fish-barrier removal

ECOSYSTEMS SERVICES & BENEFITS

• Natural flood management and flood-water storage

• Nutrient interception and water quality improvement

• Wetland ecosystem resilience

• Carbon sequestration

• Recovery of threatened habitats and species

INVESTMENT OUTCOMES

• Risk management: increased resilience to flooding

• Generates BNG units

• Carbon removal

• Water quality enhancement and supply resilience:

  • Water infrastructure savings

  • Voluntary water stewardship credits

• Environmental improvement for public benefit

NATURAL CAPITAL ESTIMATES

SPECIES & HABITAT HIGHLIGHTS

FLOODPLAIN MEADOWS & WETLANDS:

• Floodplain meadows and wet grassland are among the corridor's richest and rarest habitats, storing flood water, locking up carbon and supporting species found almost nowhere else - yet most of Kent's water bodies fall short of good ecological status under the Water Framework Directive.
  

WATER VOLE

• The water vole is Britain's fastest-declining mammal, dependent on healthy, vegetated riverbanks of exactly the kind this project restores.

EUROPEAN EEL

• The European eel is critically endangered, its numbers down by over 90% in a generation; each one migrates thousands of miles from the Sargasso Sea to rivers like the Medway, a journey removing fish barriers helps reopen.