Ballater – Local Flood Protection Options

The Community Action Plan (CAP) consultation understandably identified flooding as a major community concern.

As presented and agreed in the November 2023 public meeting, Ballater (RD) Ltd, our community trust, contracted cbec, a local hydrology specialist with extensive Dee Catchment experience, to survey the area and establish outline design options for local Ballater flood defences.

This work has been completed and a summary and a full report on eight options are being finalised and will be made available soon. 

Ballater & Crathie Community Council’s Flood Issues Group (FIG) consider that each option has its merits and no option should be discarded at this stage.

The way forward now is for cbec to build a hydrological mathematical model to confirm the flooding impacts for a range of river flow rates, prior to any new defences being built. In future work stages, this model will be used to confirm the flood defence benefits of selected options and it is an essential requirement to get planning and other consents needed to build any new defences. It is hoped this work will be completed in the next few months.

In November, FIG will organise another public meeting during which the report will be explained and a recommendation will be made to the community regarding which option(s) should be the first to move to the detailed design stage and then possibly construction. The soonest that construction could start would be 2026.

We should all understand that all these options (individually or combined) will mitigate flooding but will not protect us from a Storm Frank type event. How to protect against a Storm Frank type event in the longer term will also be discussed at the next public meeting. 

We will encourage everyone to attend.

Any comments or questions on the options should be forwarded to BCCCsecretary@outlook.com