Extra cash for flooding scheme

The Cambridgeshire fens are frequently flooded

A new international project centred on Cambridgeshire, looking at ways of reducing the risk of flooding, has been given an extra £150,000 funding.

The Flows scheme brings together teams from the UK, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands to compare methods of preventing flooding.

It also hopes to raise public awareness about the risks.

The project was launched with £4.5m of EU funding.

Bad weather

Chris Brown, the head of the project said: "I don't want to mislead people to think this means no more flooding."

Cambridgeshire County Council is running the UK branch of the project, whose full title is the Flood Plane and Land Use Optimising Workable Sustainability scheme.

Mr Brown said the amount of development in the county made it even more essential to map out areas that could be affected by bad weather.

"It's a long-term thing - we have to make planning decisions for the long-term development."

The new funding has been granted by the European Regional Development Fund and the UK government.