by The farmers in Norfolk have teamed up to build a reservoir of 1.1 million GBP in the Broads to secure their shops “future -proof”.
The collaborative project was a reaction to the confirmation of the Environment Agency (EA) in 2021 that many water abstraction licenses would be revoked or reduced to protect the sensitive wildlife in Ant Valley.
One of the affected producers was Tim Place from fruit producer Place UK, who made himself a reservoir near Natishead to protect the vital water supply.
The idea was to share water with neighboring farms to enable contributions to the capital costs, access to the river network and to cross pipelines.
After a long, complex and frustrating process to secure the necessary grants, authorizations and legal agreements, the project is finally completed – on time and only 2.6 percent over the budget.
And now six farms that cover an irrigated area of 2,866 tomorrow will benefit from the 270,000 cubic meters of water reservoir – more than 100 Olympic swimming pools.
Mr. Place, the project manager, headed a consortium of farmers’ transactions by Sir John and Tom Blofeld, Nick and Christopher Deane, Harry and Samuel Buxton, Louis and Fran Baugh as well as Ian and Jo Willetts.
Tim Place led a collaboration between Norfolk farmers to build a irrigation reservoir of 1.1 million GBP near Natishead (Image: Sonya Duncan) “This is a fantastic project that brings together six farmers to share and secure their irrigation water so that high -quality horticultural plants can continue to grow up after the revocation and reduction of groundwater abstraction licenses in Eastnglia,” said Mr. Place.
“We managed to come together, to find a solution and to develop further – but we had some problems.
“Each farm will need a reservoir at some point, and the government seems to believe that this is a way forward, but they just make it impossible. The hurdles are so high.
“We received two years from us when our licenses were revoked, but this process took four years. Now we have built a reservoir that took at least 25 years to be written off, and the EA license to fill it only for seven years.”
The project required EA abstraction licenses from two abstraction points on the rivers of the Bure and ants, of which the water is removed in winter when the river flows are highest.
Mr. Place said that the already complex planning process had been hindered because the application could not be validated before this abstraction license was granted.
In the meantime, 40 percent of the construction costs were financed with a water management scholarship from the DEFRA Farming Transformation Fund. However, this was also “extremely difficult to apply”, and the application could only exist via the EA abstraction license and the building permit.
Norfolk Farms has teamed up to build a reservoir worth 1.1 million GBP in Natishead in order to make the water supply of your companies future -proof (Image: Place UK) The urgent need for such projects has been emphasized by Norfolk’s driest March since 1929 – the 3 mm precipitation was the lowest number that was ever recorded, compared to an average of 47 mm.
In this changing climate, the government has to make it easier for farmers to build their own water storage by removing blockages when planning, licensing and granting applications – it took more than a year to secure from concept to completion during the four -year journey.
Nick Deane, who ends up in Hoveton, said: “There are no common timeline between these three critical documents that you need to receive.
“There is a contradiction because the government says that it wants something like that, and it is clearly a way that should go forward and you cannot give security for people to commit themselves for this investment because they are currently only giving a seven -year license.”
Louis BauGH, who ends up at Neatilishead, said that the successful cooperation has been strengthened by the high level of trust, which already exists between agricultural partners with many years of work relationships.
“In my view, the personalities and how they work together and work together are,” he said.
“If you enter into such a long-term capital project, you have to have 100 percent trust in your partners. The first question you ask yourself is: Can we work together?
“The other is that part of it will be more than one generation, so it is a deep -seated trust.
“The drive is the necessity – we all understand the environmental pressure, but we knew what the solution was.
“This has secured our water for the future. I hate the term future -proof, but that’s it.”
Tom Blofeld, who heads the property of his family in Hoveton and the popular confusion Adventure Park, added: “We all trusted each other if the entire project worked. Without one of us involved, the project would have been difficult, if not unattainable.
“We are really a group of brothers. We were very motivated to trust each other, but we wish the government would have helped more.
“Tim was very determined, but he had to go through some completely unnecessary obstacles. But we arrived there and we are very proud of it.”
When all the permissions were available, the winter rain proved to be a “constant annoyance” that delayed the construction effort, but pumping finally began in December 2023, and the reservoir was occupied until March 2024.
In February 2025, the water was used for trickle irrigation for some early raspberries, followed by spray irrigation for baby salad plants in March.
