At the time of writing, some vulnerable communities further down the River Tweed such as Hawick (£140m), Selkirk (£31m) and Galashiels (£3.6m) have had their flood defences strengthened. However, Peebles has not.

The JBA report commissioned on behalf of Scottish Borders Council identified the issues and made recommendations after Storm Frank, 10 years ago. Peebles is very vulnerable and urgent action is required, hopefully before the next serious weather event.

Promises have been made regarding temporary flood barriers, but further flood flow assessments require to be conducted, these require to be done ASAP. The TFA Group, Peebles Resilience Group and Peebles Community Council calls upon our elected representatives to now take this issue up with SBC, Scottish Ministers and others.

Communities are being proactive and doing everything possible with the resources provided. However, Peebles requests at least the same level of support already provided to communities further downstream.

Postscript

Since the JBA report was produced a great deal of additional analysis and research has been done. This has resulted in upgraded forecasts and newly published guidance. Much of this being introduced in the last twelve months. This new guidance includes from SEPA “Climate change allowances for flood risk assessment in land use planning”. This is now version 6 dated 25 February 2025.

Historically, SEPA recommended a universal 20% allowance in increased flow for climate change. However, in the light of the latest data and analysis, for the River Tweed this has now been increased to an uplift of 59% (JBA report used 33%).

The historical data shows that the January 1949 floods recorded a river height of 4.115 m above normal with a flow of 721 m³/S. This is considerably higher than Storm Frank in 2015 which was 3.654 m above normal with a peak flow of 631.1 m³/S. Even increasing the storm Frank flows potentially by 59% should give us all cause for concern.

Read the full report

Colin Kerr
Chairman, Walkerburn Community Council
Leader, Tweeddale Flood Advisory Group

Paul Spence
Leader, Peebles Flood Resilience Community Group
Member, Tweeddale Flood Advisory Group

Peter Maudsley
Chairman, Peebles and District Community Council
Member, Tweeddale Flood Advisory Group

Tweeddale Flood Advisory Group Facebook

Article feedback secretary@ccrbpeebles.co.uk.