A MULTI-MILLION-POUND scheme to beef up flood defences for Poole town centre are aiming to begin before the end of the year.

The huge project to deliver risk mitigations to cover the next 100 years from Poole Lighting Bridge to Hunger Hill is progressing.

BCP Council has already secured £12.4million of funding from the Environment Agency’s £5.2billion pool of flood defence grant in aid.

The local authority is currently out for tender to find a contractor to get on board and work with designers ahead of submitting a planning application.

Matt Hosey, BCP Council’s head of flood and coastal erosion risk management, said the scheme was designed to provide a standard of protection for the next 100 years, with sea level rises incorporated.

“It is to industry standard of protection which is the same around the nation,” Mr Hosey said.

“No flood defence schemes around the country would say you are 100 per cent protected. What you are doing is offering a risk mitigation to that standard.

“The good thing for us is this is tidal flood protection, which is perhaps a slightly more predictable risk.”

Ahead of submitting the planning application, the project team are due to hold public exhibition events for residents, businesses and stakeholders.

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Explaining what could happen if the scheme was not carried out, Mr Hosey said: “Without the works there would significant flood risk to Poole town centre. It is a low-lying area. All of those frontages would have flow routes through to the town centre areas.

“There is definitely a significant flood risk. That is reflected in the fact that the Environment Agency have their own temporary defence plan for Poole town centre as well.

“We work in partnership with the Environment Agency. They have got priority sites nationally and Poole town centre is one of those. If we had extreme events forecast, they would put temporary defences down West Quay Road instead, for example.”

He said: “The preference is for us to crack on and deliver this defence because that would negate the need for them to put the barriers down the highway.”

The Environment Agency and Poole Harbour Commissioners have already carried out flood defence work along Poole Quay in recent years.

The council-led project has taken an adaptive approach to address issues where increasing defences to the full height for 100-year protection in one go would be “difficult to achieve in a sympathetic way”.

“Because of the type of defences that are being delivered there, we could build one which could then have an extension built on top of it in decades to come,” Mr Hosey said.

“It is designed knowing it is adaptable but it doesn’t mean you have to go to the full height.”

He added: “Other areas where landowners are looking to develop anyway, it makes more sense to do ground raising up to the full height of the defence because they are going to be completely changing the sites anyway.”