Fighting for the Fens

 

The Fens of South Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire have always been precarious – a landscape engineered by human determination, machinery and hard labour.

Now, as ageing infrastructure meets rising seas and volatile weather, the vast area of low-lying land faces its gravest threat since it was drained in the 17th century.

According to a report this week on the Lincolnshire Live website (Jamie Waller, 29 September 2025), the county could be forced to “surrender the Fens” back to the sea unless billions of pounds are spent on new defences.

As someone who lives on the edge of the Fens, I read his account from Lincolnshire County Council’s Environment Committee with unease – it could almost have been lifted from the pages of my upcoming novel Flood Waters Down (to be published Spring 2026).

Amy Shaw, flood risk manager for the Environment Agency (EA), didn’t sugar-coat it. “The cost is likely to be billions, not millions,” she told councillors. “The problem will be here before 2100 – within the next 10 or 15 years we will need to have a clear direction.”

This is no longer a hypothetical dilemma for the future. Decisions made now will determine whether the Fens and low-lying lands of Lincolnshire remain habitable for future generations.

Breaking point
Most of the area’s pumping stations and sluices were commissioned in the 1960s and recent Environment Agency studies show what would happen if those pumps stopped: vast swathes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire would be under 1.5 metres of water.

Combine this with rising sea and tide levels, and it’s clear why the issue is urgent. Daniel Withnall, chief executive of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board, laid out the scale of the threat. “If we do nothing, we are surrendering the south of Lincolnshire – that’s how drastic it is,” he said.

The Fens 2100+ partnership (a consortium of local authorities and interested organisations) has begun preparing proposals to bid for government funding. But the scale of the ask is daunting and political priorities are often short-term.

Councillors at the meeting made no attempt to disguise the severity of the problem. Tom Ashton (Conservative) said: “I’m pleased our ambition to defend the Fens matches the ambition of our ancestors to create it. It will come down to money, and a huge amount of it. It’s unfortunate that river maintenance money is going down, not up.”

Raymond Whitaker (Reform UK Ltd) warned about the decrepit state of existing infrastructure: “If we have a couple of big storms, the pumping stations could break down and Lincolnshire could flood.”

And Ashley Baxter (Independent) brought both history and climate politics into the room, citing an ancestor who first came to the country as a refugee to help drain the Fens. “Now, four centuries later,” he warned, “climate change is the elephant in the room.”

Battling against nature
The Fens have never been entirely “won”. Every field, every straightened river and drainage channel is part of a centuries-long battle against water.

In dry summers, the black peat soils shrink and crack. In wet seasons, pumps groan under the strain while the North Sea, higher now than at any time in recent history, creeps upward year by year.

Locals know this instinctively. Farming families talk about the land “sitting on borrowed time.” And yet, the Fens are more than well-drained soil: they are one of the UK’s most productive agricultural regions. A third of the nation’s vegetables come from these fields.

Foreshadowing reality
When I began writing Flood Waters Down, my aim was to push the current fragility of the Fens into the future, imagining a scenario where sea defences are neglected, climate extremes accelerate and political will falters.

The novel explores the consequences for communities forced to adapt to flooded landscapes – some clinging on with technology, others turning to new ways of living. It’s a speculative narrative rooted in the science of climate change and infrastructure decay.

Blurring the lines
It’s rarely comfortable when fiction and reality come together. Reading the Lincolnshire Live report felt like opening a chapter of my own novel – except this time the decisions rest not with imagined characters but with government ministers, councillors, engineers and all of us who live in this landscape.

The Fens have always been a battleground between human ingenuity and nature. Four centuries ago, our ancestors chose ambition and succeeded. Today, the question remains: do we defend or retreat – or just prevaricate until nature decides for us?

To stand still is to gamble because, as Councillor Whitaker pointed out, one or two big storms could push fragile pumping stations past breaking point.

Perhaps this is the true value of stories like Flood Waters Down – to bring perspective and help us imagine potential consequences before they unfold. Either way, the clock is ticking.

Villagers seek urgent action over flooding

Flooding caused by storm Henk at Little Hale (Jan 2024).     Photo: Clive Simpson

RESIDENTS of a Lincolnshire village want to call time on a flooding problem that has seen them marooned twice in three months.

Homeowners say they have been lucky so far that water hasn’t entered their properties - but they fear the next big rainstorm may tell a different story.

More than 20 villagers attended the parish council’s bi-monthly meeting on Tuesday (9 January) to air their views and concerns.

They want to see an end to the flooding threat which isolated the village after storm Babet last October and then again after storm Henk at the start of this month.

On both occasions the village was inaccessible to normal traffic as drainage dykes overflowed to block the B1394 road, which connects nearby Heckington with Helpringham and is used as a link between the A17 and A52 roads.

Cllr Amy Lennox, parish council chair, said work carried out in 2023 to help alleviate the flooding problem hadn’t proved effective.

Members of the public also expressed concerns that drivers of large vehicles ignored road closed signs and continued to drive through the water, creating bow waves that raised levels further.

Others suggested the flooding made emergency access difficult or impossible, with people also having to cancel medical appointments and being unable to transport children to school.

Cllr Andrew Key, the village’s representative on Lincolnshire County Council, said: “We don’t want to be doom mongers but with climate change you can’t help but think this problem is going to get worse.

“With such a large number of people expressing concern tonight it is obviously a very serious issue for this community and needs urgent attention.”

Anglian Water brought in a tanker to remove some of the excess water and repair a control panel that had been damaged by storm Henk and led to drains overflowing in another part of the village.

A spokesperson said: “Flooding is often an extremely complex issue with many different owners for the drainage network, such as Highways, local councils, private owners as well as ourselves.

“We’re already looking at future options for how we may be able to reconfigure our pipes and pumps to help the issue, but we also need to work with the local council, Environment Agency and Internal Drainage Board to keep drainage ditches clear so that excess water can get away more easily in the future.”

Several residents suggested the flooding problem could be solved by the installation of a large underground relief pipe linking a culvert alongside the main road with a drainage dyke in the heart of the village.

The Parish council is now preparing a new report setting out options to alleviate the flooding and says it will be contacting relevant authorities to make the case for urgent action.

Cllr Key said he had also been calling for repairs to the village’s Fen Road, the poor condition of which was being made worse by the recent flooding episodes.

“For a residential road it is by far the worst in my division and I am lobbying to get something done about it.”

Street lite

Photo: Clive Simpson

On the road home the night-time light has changed. We are in the heart of South Lincolnshire’s farming landscape approaching the interestingly named hamlet of Cowbit, midway along the old main road between Crowland and Spalding.

The road bends gently along a raised bank, originally built to stave off flooding from the plain of the nearby River Welland, and the lights cut through the night like harbour beacons around a vast concave seashore.

Tonight, I notice that the familiar curve of orange-glowing street lights - picking out the homeward route ahead against the flat Fenland horizon - have been replaced by the cool and dazzlingly bright light of modern LED technology.

Definitely cheaper to run - and therefore more energy efficient - these lights are an increasing part of our night-time scenery up and down the country.

But after five miles of driving along dark, unlit roads the clinical brilliance comes as a shock to night-adjusted eyes.

All this is part of local authority plans - in this case Lincolnshire County Council - to replace and update all our traditional street and road lighting over the coming years.

Energy and cost savings aside, the new kind of lighting is defined by its brightness and intensity, like spotlights on a West End stage show. But at least there is less apparent spillage into the heavens above.

LED luminance is potentially much more controllable than traditional sodium light and so one might reasonably ask the question of our lighting engineers - is it necessary (and even safe for approaching motorists) to have these beams on full luminance at the point where we suddenly cross from dark to light?

There are increasing complaints from across the country where such shiny new lights - installed in normal streets and cul-de-sacs - have cut through curtained windows to illuminate living and sleeping spaces, playing havoc for those in the vicinity.

Bright is not always best for human health and there is obviously a need for more research into the potential risks from the glare of LED lighting.

Already it is well documented that exposure to LED light suppresses melatonin production by up to five times more than exposure to sodium-based light, disrupting our biological clocks and affecting sleeping and rest periods.

Recent research in Spain has indicated that long-term exposure to LED street lighting could, as a result of the high levels of blue band radiation, cause irreparable harm to the retina of the human eye.

And last year a report by the French government stated that a luminance level higher than 10,000 cd/m2 causes visual discomfort whatever the position of the lighting unit in the field of vision.

As the emission surfaces of LEDs are highly-concentrated point sources the luminance of each individual source can be 1000 times higher than discomfort levels, making this intense glare a tangible problem.

Which brings me to reflect on the familiar orange, phosphorescent glow that has been part of our night time scene for so long.

Despite its intrusion, particularly into the night sky above, will we come to rue the day of its disappearance?

At the ending of DH Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’ the book’s central character Paul Morel is drawn ‘towards the city's gold phosphorescence’.

Signifying corruption and decay, ‘phosphorescence' was to become one of Lawrence’s jargon words in subsequent novels.

‘But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness... He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.’

For Paul Morel, the ending was something of a false epiphany. That 'gold phosphorescence' was an emanation of the mechanised life of the industrialised world - the glow of false promise.

In the end Paul’s tragedy was that he was only able to move in the direction of the city, humming not with the natural activity of a hive, but with machinery, and glowing not with sunshine and warmth but with the ghastly phosphorescence of street lamps and decay.

That familiar orange glow in our night-time skies does indeed represent something of the past, industrial age - whereas the clinical, white light of LEDs is symbolic of the modern, sanitised world.

Our continued attempts to tame and banish the natural darkness and rhythms of life only serve to deepen the shadows around us. What, I wonder, would Lawrence have made of this?

The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information