Our core purpose as a partnership is to reduce the risks and impacts of flooding across Somerset. Everything we do has to include this aim.
Our principles as a partnership are:
- Doing extra
- Working together
- Acting on local priorities
These principles interlock.
Doing extra
Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA) membership enables partners to go above and beyond what they usually do. The SRA funds additional schemes and activities that otherwise would not happen.
The SRA:
- raises extra money
- funds extra work
- provides more information
- gives people more opportunities to work together
Working together
We connect different people, different places, different sources of funding, different approaches and ideas across Somerset. Working together, making concerted efforts means that more gets done than would otherwise be possible, in ways that provide good value for local people. Somerset benefits from the collective experience and knowledge of everybody involved with the SRA.
Bringing people together in the ways it does, the SRA serves as a public forum and co-ordinating force for informing and inspiring communities. The more people understand local flood risks, the more people get involved, the more can be done to act on local priorities.
Acting on local priorities
The SRA concentrates on what it identifies as being important for Somerset. Calling upon technical expertise and detailed knowledge, the SRA makes choices about local priorities.
We have been given freedom and money to do things differently. We provide a more flexible local space where people working together can be more wide-ranging, more proactive and more creative in the approaches they take to Somerset’s flood risk management needs. Things can be more joined-up between organisations, within catchments and across the county.
When people look at things in a more joined-up way, more possibilities arise. It becomes easier for us to spot opportunities for bringing schemes and activities together. It also becomes easier to identify areas where there are gaps. Through a process of assessing which of these areas should be our local priorities, and by working together with communities to reduce the risks and impacts of flooding, we set about doing extra works which meet local priorities.