Before

After

Fish Pass Appraisal and Design

Client: Wear Rivers Trust

Location: Bracepeth Beck, Wear catchment, County Durham

Ribble Rivers worked closely together with the Wear Rivers Trust to improve fish passage on Brancepeth Beck, a tributary of the River Wear with multiple impassable and semi-impassable barriers to fish migration. The beck was failing to meet Good Ecological Status under the Water Framework Directive, with a key contributor being these migration barriers.

A site visit and Fish Passage Appraisal were undertaken to evaluate fish passage issues at multiple structures and identify the most suitable options for improving passage. One key weir was located at the bottom of the beck and considered completely impassable, it was for this weir that Ribble Rivers designed an embedded rock ramp which was constructed on top of the existing weir. The rock ramp combined a roughed surface and a low-flow channel to provide a nature-like bed that would allow all fish species present to migrate across a large range of flows.

​The Wear Rivers Trust oversaw the construction of the rock ramp which saw immediate results with migratory fish moving up this beck for the first time in 150 years. ​