Added by Ewan Larcombe - 26/7/2007

Will the Jubilee River work properly this time?

I suppose the correct answer to this question is 'it all depends'

In January 2003, when the £110m world-class, award winning flood alleviation scheme was used for the first time, many hundreds of homes down stream of Windsor were flooded for the first time since 1947.  Where the Jubilee River re-enters the Thames in Datchet, the area that should have been protected was the first to flood, but of course the people of Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton were saved, and that was the primary purpose of the project.  To this day, the Environment Agency continue to deny that they dumped floodwater on to the helpless villagers downstream of Windsor.

Unfortunately the Jubilee River suffered significant structural damage (due to high floodwater flows) during operation in January 2003, and it has been the subject of a £2.75m out-of-court settlement (paid to the EA by the insurers of the designers).  Why £2.75m - because that was the maximum of liability.

Despite some £4m in repairs to date, elements of the Jubilee River are still sub-standard and awaiting repair.   In particular, a £1.4m repair to 250m of relatively new embankment at Taplow is still required, and even when that is complete the Jubilee River may never be capable of carrying its design capacity of 215 cumecs (cubic meters per second).

So further to the answer 'it all depends', some important factors are:

• flood peak volumes and timings
• precise and incremental flow control at Taplow
• close monitoring of structures/embankments and flood water levels
• some good fortune

Written by Ewan Larcombe (with fingers crossed) at 05.20 hrs on 26/7/2007