Brayford faces “increased dredging needs” in face of rising flood levels

The trust which cares for the Brayford Pool has warned the city centre water way faces an “increasing need for more regular dredging”  due to rising levels of flooding and high-water in recent years.

The Brayford Trust, which took on the lease for the pool in 2010, outlines in its business plan for 2019/20-2023/24 how its main focus will be to “build up reserves for dredging as necessary”.

“Dredging is probably the most important activity for the trust to manage, but also the most complex to plan for with any degree of accuracy and our most expensive maintenance activity,” says the trust’s business plan.

“It is without doubt one of the greatest challenges in maintaining and preserving the Brayford Pool.

“There can be little doubt that if the increased incidence of high-water levels and flooding in recent years continues it will bring with it an increasing need for more regular dredging.”

Photo: Emily Norton for The Lincolnite

The trust has not publicly revealed its finances as it goes before the council next Monday, claiming commercial sensitivity, however, the City of Lincoln Council currently gives it a £25,000 grant on an annual basis.

In the report, the trust says the moorings on the pool are “by far the major source of income.”

It recently spent £580,000 on building new moorings and carrying out a major dredging exercise to bring its facilities up to a high standard.

It says that without that income the pool would ”rapidly return to the appalling state in which it could be found in the 1960s”.

Further plans the trust hopes to take place over the next few years include:

• Improvements to its public relations and social media
• Maintenance of the South Bank to protect it from erosion
• Work to begin on a new Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust pilot project to establish a new habitat for water wildlife
• Improvements to the South-East corner of the pool including new gate on the launching ramp
• A refurbishment of the information boards placed around the pool
• Repairs to the city council’s viewing platform which was deemed unsafe in 2015
• Improving connectivity to the rest of the city

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