“Leicestershire is typical of a lot of East Midlands areas,” said Ruth Needham, head of landscape and partnerships at the Trent Rivers Trust.
Her organisation has mapped the River Soar’s catchment area since 2013. In short, almost every drop of rain in a 500 sq m radius eventually flows into the Soar, which winds through the county.
About 80% of Leicestershire is farmland, she explained. Drainage systems were built into those fields to help crops grow, but such systems are designed to stop waterlogging and increase the speed of water entering rivers.
When you factored in the extra roads, car parks and housing that came with new developments, Needham said it created the perfect storm.
Flat surfaces like tarmac and concrete do not absorb water. Instead, rain rushes into rivers and brooks, sometimes overwhelming drains.
And parts of Leicestershire are seeing rapid housing growth along the River Soar.
Between 2019 and 2022, official data shows 13% of new homes in the Charnwood Borough Council area – north of the county – were built in flood-prone zones, much higher than the national average.
Parts of Loughborough, Barrow-upon-Soar and Sileby – all in the Charnwood area – bore much of the 2025 floods, though their low-lying nature also makes them vulnerable.
It is a similar picture in the south of the county.
Whetstone sits in the Blaby district, an area currently behind on its five-year housing supply. It needs to build more and the village is being seen as fertile land to make up the deficit.
But on 6 January 2025, the banks of the Soar burst and poured into Whetstone Brook. Drainage systems put in place when new estates had been built over the past decade could not cope.
Homes near the brook were inundated, a primary school closed for months and an award-winning pub would not reopen until May.
Mike Jelfs, a retired architect and environmental campaigner, has lived in Elliott Close in Whetstone since 1997.
“Houses were four or five feet deep in water,” he said. “It was the second time in two years – something that had never happened before.”
Locally, Jelfs said, there was a feeling a decade of rapid development had increased the flood risk.
Residents want developers to take more responsibility and David Wilson Homes, which wants to build more houses there, has recently responded by strengthening the banks of the brook among other measures.
Meanwhile, London-based Tritax Big Box Developments is preparing plans for 4,500 homes and commercial buildings that would straddle Whetstone Brook less than a mile away from the recently flooded homes.
The company said a “comprehensive” flood and drainage modelling would be carried out as part of the planning process for the so-called garden village.