Whitstable Bets on Rain Gardens Over Concrete

Southern Water is combining new SuDS schemes with surface water separation across six hectares of the town.

10 Jul 2026

Southern Water is deploying nature based drainage across Whitstable at a scale rarely attempted by a single utility. New sustainable drainage schemes are under way at Cornwallis Circle and Whitstable Library, while surface water is being separated from combined sewers on Russell Drive and Woodman Avenue. A further six hectares of separation work is planned. The aim is to stop storm overflows at the source rather than manage the spills afterward.

Supporting measures reinforce the approach. More than 1,000 water butts have gone in across the town to slow rainwater before it reaches the sewer network, alongside sealing of ageing infrastructure at Church Lane and St John's Road. Combined, these steps cut both the volume and the speed of water hitting a system already strained by heavier rainfall.

The work runs in parallel with treatment works reconfiguration that has already reduced overflows at Tankerton Beach. Engineers are separately surveying pumping stations and sewers across the town, hunting for further chances to intervene before water ever reaches the combined network.

This layering of nature based fixes with conventional engineering echoes a pattern spreading across England's water sector, where rain gardens, swales and drainage retrofits increasingly sit alongside pipes rather than replacing them. Government pledges on natural flood management point the same direction, though funding for such retrofits still relies mostly on individual company capital programmes rather than dedicated national grants. Pathfinder Project Manager Jerome Corcoran said the combined approach is already producing measurable gains for local bathing waters, with further improvement expected as more sites come online.