Nimbus Consulting · Helen Martin C.WEM · United Kingdom
Flood modelling, flood protection and asset management, drought and water resources, Environment Agency permitting and planning support — for organisations, growing businesses and individual landowners alike.
01 — Who I work with
A water company drawing up a drought plan and a homeowner facing a flood objection need very different documents. Underneath, they need the same thing: an assessment that holds up when somebody checks it.
Organisations & infrastructure
Water companies, local authorities and LLFAs, drainage boards, utilities, large estates, and the consultancies working for them.
Businesses & developers
SMEs, site promoters, architects and contractors who need the water question answered before it holds up an application.
Individuals & landowners
Homeowners, farmers, riparian owners and smallholders dealing with a river, a refusal, or a flood map that looks wrong.
02 — The range
Flooding and drought are one catchment measured at opposite extremes. Most specialists work one end of the range. Working across both means the flood case and the drought case come from a single evidence base.
03 — Practice areas
Too much water
Hydrology and hydraulics built to be checked — by a regulator, a reviewer, or an inspector.
Too much water
Condition, residual risk and maintenance liability, assessed and costed.
Too little water
Scarcity planning that holds when the trigger levels are actually reached.
Both ends
Permits written for the officer who has to determine them.
Both ends
The water evidence that carries an application through determination.
04 — How the work runs
Consenting is a sequence, not a document. Each stage exists because skipping it is what sends schemes back to the start.
A look at the site and the constraints before anything is priced. If the answer is “you don’t need a model”, you hear it here.
Data, model and assumptions written down where a regulator can find them. Uncertainty stated rather than buried in an appendix.
The argument built for whoever decides it — permitting officer, planning committee, or inspector. Different audiences, different documents.
Consultee responses, queries and conditions handled through to the decision. The job finishes when it’s consented, not when the report is issued.
The consultant behind Nimbus
Helen Martin is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager (CIWEM) with thirty years in flood and water management — modelling catchments, assessing defences, planning for drought, and taking schemes through Environment Agency permitting and the planning process.
Her work sits where technical evidence meets regulation: building the hydrology and hydraulics a decision rests on, then making the case to the people who decide — permitting officers, planning committees and inspectors. Commissions run from strategic work for water companies and local authorities to a single conversation with a landowner about a flood map that looks wrong.
Nimbus Consulting is her independent practice: one consultant, without hand-offs, working UK-wide. The person who scopes the job is the person who does the work and stands behind it at determination.
Three decades of catchment modelling, permitting and planning evidence as a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager (CIWEM), and a clear view of which arguments survive determination.
05 — Common questions
General guidance, not site-specific advice — every site turns on its own detail. If your question isn’t here, it costs nothing to ask.
Usually, if the site is in Flood Zone 2 or 3, is larger than one hectare, or the council’s validation checklist asks for one. Some smaller proposals are covered by the Environment Agency’s standing advice instead. A short scoping conversation settles it either way — and if you don’t need one, I’ll say so.
No. An objection sets out what the evidence hasn’t yet shown, and it can usually be addressed — better modelling, a changed layout, raised floor levels, or a compensation scheme. The important thing is to respond to what the objection actually says rather than resubmitting the same case.
Work on, over, under or within 8 metres of a main river generally needs a Flood Risk Activity Permit from the Environment Agency; smaller watercourses need consent from the lead local flood authority or drainage board. Some low-risk activities are covered by exemptions. Doing the work first and asking afterwards is the expensive order.
Sometimes. The national mapping is generalised and can misrepresent individual properties — ground levels, defences and small structures are not always captured. Where the evidence supports it, the Environment Agency has a formal process for reviewing the map for your property.
A straightforward Flood Risk Assessment is typically a few weeks; one needing new hydraulic modelling is longer, and permit determination has its own statutory clock once submitted. The honest answer arrives after scoping — and programme is agreed before any work starts.
It depends on what the site actually needs, which is why scope comes first — you get a fixed quote for a defined deliverable before committing to anything. The initial conversation about your site costs nothing.
06 — Show me the site
Drop in a map screenshot, site plan or photograph and mark what matters — where the water comes in, what floods, what is already built. It is far quicker than describing it, and it tells me in one look what three paragraphs cannot.
Drop a plan, map screenshot or photo here — or just sketch on the grid.
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07 — Contact
The location, the constraint and the deadline are enough to start. If it isn’t my area I’ll say so and point you at someone whose area it is.