Where water is welcomed and rivers run clear

Slow the Flow is a call to listen to the land and the rain — to the water that falls, flows, and too often floods or fouls. It’s an inspirational place for those who want to turn puddled streets and overflowing sewers into clean streams and green spaces. Here you’ll find stories, guidance, and hope: a guidebook for working with water, not against it — for shaping a future where every drop has its place, and every community can breathe a little easier when the clouds break open.

Mission Statement

Slow the Flow is a place to explore how we can take better care of our rivers, our homes, our land and our towns by doing one simple thing: slowing water down.

From field to floodplain, from loo to sea, water wants to move — but in today’s built-up, hard-surfaced, fast-living world, it often moves too quickly. This website exists to help change that.

We bring together knowledge, ideas, and stories about how slowing the flow can:

  • keep sewage out of our rivers

  • keep floodwater out of our homes

  • keep soil and silt on our land

  • and keep towns greener, cooler, and more resilient.

This is not a campaign, but a conversation — about the landscapes we live in, the infrastructure beneath our feet, and the ways we can all take part in restoring balance to our water systems.

Why Slow the Flow?

Water shapes everything — and when it flows too fast, it erodes, pollutes, and overwhelms. When we slow it down, we give nature time to filter, absorb, and breathe. We give engineers time to manage, and people time to prepare.

Across four key themes, this site will help you understand what’s going wrong, what could go right, and what we can do — together — to fix it.

Slowing Sewage

Our sewers are overloaded. Rainfall hits hard surfaces, rushes into combined sewers, and mixes with what we flush. The result? Overflowing pipes, storm drains that dump into rivers, and coastlines closed by pollution.
Learn how small changes in how we build, connect and drain can help turn the tide.

Slowing Floodwater

In towns and villages, on floodplains and hillsides, water that once soaked into land now races downhill. Climate change brings heavier rain. Urban sprawl brings harder surfaces. And rivers can only hold so much.
Explore natural ways and engineered means to slow the flood before it reaches the door and then stopping it before it becomes an unwelcome guest.

Slowing Rural Flow

From bare fields in winter to straightened ditches and drained wetlands, our countryside sheds water like a sieve. That water takes with it soil, nutrients, and pollution.
See how farming, forestry and field design can help keep water on the land for longer.

Slowing Urban Flow

Tarmac and concrete can’t soak up a drop. When rain falls on our streets and roofs, it races into drains and causes chaos downstream.
Discover how green roofs, rain gardens, and better drainage design can help build climate-ready places.