A newly refurbished pumping station at Bentley, Doncaster, which provides greater protection to 1,699 homes and businesses, has been officially opened.

The £14 million scheme is an investment in one of South Yorkshire’s most important flood defence assets and makes the Bentley area more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

The pumping station is used almost daily, not just during flood incidents - if it stopped working its impact would be noticed within a few days. Subsidence caused by 20th century coal mining means the station is used nearly every day even in dry weather.

Bentley experienced devastating flooding in 2007 when the pumping station flooded, making it inaccessible for Environment Agency incident response teams. This led to the decision to refurbish and upgrade it, to make it more resilient.

The government funded refurbishment of the pumping station increased overall pumping capacity by 20 per cent and reduced operational carbon emissions by over 20 per cent.

Refurbishing the existing pumping station, instead of constructing a new one, has saved the taxpayer £8 million and made 60 per cent carbon savings. This is part of the Environment Agency’s work to use new innovative techniques, technology and lower-carbon materials to reduce its carbon footprint and help reach net zero targets.

The site is now significantly more flood resilient because all the vital equipment is now positioned out of the way of potential flooding, and access routes to the site have been raised above flood level.

The scheme was part of the Environment Agency’s previous six-year programme of capital flood defence schemes, which has successfully protected more than 314,000 homes since 2015.

Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency, said:

“At 80 years old, Bentley Ings Pumping Station is a great example of combining history with cutting edge engineering to prepare for rising climate shocks.

“The teams working on this scheme have reduced carbon emissions in construction and operations by 60 percent, made savings of £8 million and increased pumping capacity by 20 percent.”

The Coal Authority supported the project with a contribution of £1.5 million to the project.

Andy Morritt, acting head of Environment Strategy & Sustainability at the Coal Authority, said:

“As part of our work to make a better future for people and the environment in mining areas, we work with key partners like the Environment Agency on schemes to mitigate and prevent flooding and pollution.”

The refurbishment work was impacted by flooding in November 2019, so an additional £4 million was made available to repair storm damage to the pumping storm damage to the pumping station and provide further upgrades.

Environmental enhancements have also been made as part of the scheme through the planting over 1 km hedgerows, 60 trees and 2 hectares of diverse grass meadow.