The School of Natural and Social Sciences (SNSS) and the Countryside and Communities Research Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire were commissioned by the Isbourne Catchment Group (ICG) and the Environment Agency (EA) to undertake an initial assessment of the River Isbourne to determine the feasibility and potential benefits of applying natural flood management (NFM) techniques across the Isbourne catchment. Other engineering options had been considered in an analysis of the catchment in 2010 (Haycock 2010) and some minor changes have been made by the EA in the last few years. However, most significant engineering options were not considered to be cost effective whilst soft engineering options such as land use change and natural flood management were recommended for further investigation, which is the focus of this report – no assessment of hard engineering possibilities are made in this report as it is beyond the remit of the investigation. The report describes the catchment characteristics, gives an overview of potential NFM options and provides recommendations of which of these could be implemented in the catchments and ways forward
