Leeds City Council

Leeds City Council is the local authority of Leeds in West Yorkshire and it is located in the Civic Hall. The first elections of the modern city council was held in advance in 1973, with the city council established the following year. Leeds is the third largest city and is one of the fastest growing, greenest cities in the UK.

The Project – Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme

In the UK flood risk is increasing. On 26 December 2015 Leeds experienced significant and widespread flooding with some of the highest river levels ever recorded. The flooding affected more than 2,000 residential properties. The Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme (LFAS) came about to reduce widespread flooding happening in the future.

LFAS Phase 1 is one of the largest river flood defence projects in the country. The first phase reduces the flood risk of over 3,500 residential and commercial city centre properties. One of the key components of the project was the replacement of existing fixed Victorian weirs at two locations with innovative mechanical weirs, placing Leeds at the cutting edge of national flood defence schemes. They used pioneering technology which was the first of its kind for a protection scheme in the UK, and has attracted interest both nationally and internationally.

Ecological enhancements have also been introduced through the creation of fish spawning habitats and diverse flow conditions, complemented by new fish, otter and elver passes at both of the weirs, which resulted in salmon being spotted through the city centre for the first time in over 200 years.

This project won the Large Project of the Year at the NEC Awards 2017.

Result

Why did Leeds City Council use time lapse and how was their experience with Time Lapse UK?

We spoke with Katy Bullock, Senior Engineer at Leeds City Council.

“In terms of why we wanted to use time lapse videos – it’s such a large innovation scheme we wanted to capture the construction process. It’s not every day you undertake huge engineering works in the river to remove Victorian structures!

We found Time Lapse UK very easy to work with, gave us what we needed and also the web viewing portal was a really useful tool.”