Cherwell District Council; Oxfordshire CountyCouncil (LNRS); Thames21; BBOWT; the Environment Agency; and the Cherwell andRay Catchment Partnership, which provides wider catchment coordination.
The River Cherwell and its tributaries are in poor ecological condition. Water quality is failing across the catchment, hydromorphology has been severely modified by historical channel straightening, and the largely arable landscape generates significant fine sediment and nutrient loading. The Cherwell and Tributaries Landscape Restoration project is addressing this at a catchment scale, working to reconnect floodplains, remorph river channels, create wetland and deliver nature-based flood management across a landscape that also faces major housing and infrastructure growth pressure. Nature-based flood management in the upper catchment could significantly reduce risk to downstream communities, while the corridor between Otmoor and the wider Cotswold landscape represents a strategic nature recovery link that is currently missing.
The project is led by the Cherwell Farmer Cluster (NECFC CIC), and its distinctive strength is its delivery vehicle: a strong, active farmer cluster with over 35 members and genuine farmer-led governance. This provides the durable, trusted structure that nature recovery investors most commonly find lacking, with the CIC offering a governance layer above individual landholdings. Three tributary schemes - on the River Swere, Deddington Brook and the Sor Brook - have secured feasibility funding and are in active development, with ecological baselines, landowner agreements and outline designs underway. Together they cover approximately 100 hectares of floodplain land, providing near-term proof of concept within a cluster geography of around 10,000 hectares of farmland with restoration potential.
Habitat work focuses on lowland wet grassland and floodplain meadow, wetland scrapes and shallow open water, riparian and floodplain woodland, reedbed and fen, reconnected paleochannels and backwaters, and improved riparian buffer strips. Such work benefits water vole; wading birds including snipe, lapwing and curlew; farmland birds such as corn bunting; and river macrophytes, with white-clawed crayfish refuge potential in isolated tributaries. Natural flood management opportunity modelling has already been completed for the wider catchment, giving an evidence-based picture of flood risk reduction value. The project is a sister to the Evenlode Landscape Recovery, with shared infrastructure and lessons learned, and is activelye xploring a Landscape Recovery Round 3 bid as the primary mechanism for scaling- with the longer-term ambition of a joined-up nature recovery spine across north Oxfordshire.
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