Getting to know our zones and the team behind them
We have been overwhelmed with the response to our vision for how Lagoon Hull could look.
This summer, we unveiled the four zones that will make up the eight-mile causeway between Hessle Foreshore and the Port of Hull. And we’ve been inundated with messages of support ever since.
Bill Blackledge from 2B Landscape Consultancy played a key role in forming the plans. He and his team worked alongside Lagoon Hull project director Paul Hatley to contextualise how the finished scheme could look – and the results give us plenty to look forward to.
Bill previously worked on major projects including the Great Western Railway Electrification for Network Rail and Green Streets in Calderdale. He is currently involved in West Wolds Slow the Flow, a nature-based response to flooding and climate change in our local catchment, and his team recently won a national award for its role in promoting sustainable drainage and natural flood management.
But he isn’t stopping there. With such widescale involvement in a variety of projects, Bill saw the opportunity to work on a transformational local development as one that was too good to turn down.
He sat down with our team to discuss his role so far and to describe what excited him about Hull’s most transformational project in a generation:
Bill Blackledge: 2B Landscape Consultancy
Q. How did you come to be involved in Lagoon Hull?
A. Paul and I have worked together in the past, most notably on the Siemens Wind Turbine Factory.
After a few years had gone by, I met him again at the launch of the Living With Water Partnership in 2017. Although it was early days for Lagoon Hull, the concept was being developed and tested by the project team. Whilst we were keenly aware of the sensitivities around the Humber Estuary, we could also see that this was a project full of possibilities.
Paul asked us to look at the early concepts and develop the ideas with the wider team.
Q. What role did you play in developing the zones, which give the public a better understanding of what they can expect?
A. Paul already had a sense that there should be different uses for different parts of the Lagoon, ranging from nature-based in the west to increasingly more city and port-based moving east.
We worked through the concepts together, thinking about the landscape impacts and the exciting opportunities having this new non-tidal water body could provide. This helped to crystallise the approach to the four zones.
Q. Why was Lagoon a project you are keen to be involved in?
A. This is an opportunity to be involved in an impressive civil engineering project and to influence it as a team of landscape professionals.
Projects like this are often dominated by engineering or economic challenges. We’re here to help Lagoon Hull to focus on the environmental issues, to keep thinking about how it will look and what it will be like to experience and to make the most of the possibilities it generates.
We also can't ignore the significant flood protection benefits that the project would bring to the city, if realised. Sea level rise is a clear threat and more than 250,000 people need something they can rely on to keep tidal flood water out.
We find ourselves increasingly drawn to projects that respond to climate change and make the landscape work hard, rather than just 'looking pretty'.
Q. Which elements of the project particularly interest you?
A. There are several. We need to understand how Lagoon Hull will change the outlook for the River Hull and the wider estuary waterfront - which is a critical part of the city's heritage and character, and something I am particularly interested in.
There are great placemaking and biodiversity opportunities, particularly along the causeway and in the Nature and Living Zones, which will be tremendously exciting for everyone living in our part of the world. As a project, it must make every effort to maximise these opportunities and to minimise any adverse effects.
Everyone involved needs to be very clear about the Humber's special qualities for nature and how to develop the project in harmony with these qualities. This is best achieved by these approaches being integral to the design and not through post-design 'mitigation'. Working on a project where these aims are so central is exciting to us and we are pleased to assist the project team to this end.
You can find out much more about Lagoon Hull’s zoning plans here.