WORK to reduce the flood risk and restore agricultural land in Grasmere has been completed by the Environment Agency.

As part of the Agency’s asset recovery programme, more than 1,200 tonnes of gravel has been removed from the River Rothey over the past three months, to ensure all flood defences are repaired and work completed ahead of winter this year.

The work at Grasmere will help make the home and businesses of the residents of the village more resilient.

The recovery work was hampered by limited access to the river and farmland where the December flooding had deposited four large piles of gravel which presented a flood risk to the village and took the land out of production.

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Environment Agency Advisor from the Flood and Coastal Risk Management National Service, Howard Lawton said: “It has taken over three months to extract more than 1,200 tonnes of gravel out of the watercourse in Ambleside due to the severity of the damage caused to the land and the poor access.

“Along the River Rothay in Grasmere there were four different sites where we had to remove the gravel, and at the peak of the work we had two diggers on site.

“To allow us access to remove the deposits in the river, we had to take down part of the bank, which we have now rebuilt. Removing the deposits in the river is part of our work to reduce further flood risk in the area.

“Two of the sites were linked together and had caused damage to the farm land. The final stage of the project was to repair this damage on the farm land, enabling it to return to agricultural use again. The work reinstated access across the fields which are now usable again.”