Kinross, a small market town on the western shore of Loch Leven in Perth & Kinross, is building a new waterfront park designed to absorb flooding with wetlands, rain gardens and restored shoreline habitat rather than concrete barriers.
The Kinross South Park & Foreshore Park project will include a tidal wetland and a rain garden engineered to soak up surface water runoff that has historically pooled where the town meets the loch edge. Perth & Kinross Council is now hiring environmental specialists to guide the scheme's ecological design, as listed on the Public Contracts Scotland procurement portal. The contract value and timeline have not been made public.
The stakes are high given where the project sits. Loch Leven is one of Scotland's most ecologically sensitive freshwater bodies: a Ramsar wetland of international importance, a Special Protection Area for birds including pink-footed geese, and a National Nature Reserve. The loch spent years recovering from algal blooms triggered by agricultural nutrient runoff in the 1990s, and any new development on its shores is expected to leave the water better off, not worse.
Source: NationGraph.
Scottish Environment Protection Agency flood maps have flagged the Kinross area as vulnerable to surface water and river flooding, a risk that climate projections show worsening as winter rainfall intensifies. Scotland's 2019 Climate Change Act requires local councils to fold adaptation into their infrastructure planning, and Scottish Government policy since roughly 2015 has pushed hard away from piped drainage and flood walls toward so-called blue-green infrastructure: engineered wetlands, sustainable drainage systems and habitat restoration that handle stormwater while delivering biodiversity gains.
For Kinross, the foreshore project also reflects direct community pressure. The Kinross-shire Local Place Plan, a grassroots planning document made possible under Scotland's Planning Act 2019, identified improving the loch shoreline as a top local priority. The South Park site has long been seen as underused and prone to waterlogging.
The approach mirrors projects elsewhere in Scotland. The Eddleston Water scheme in the Scottish Borders, which used river restoration and floodplain reconnection to reduce downstream flood risk, has become a widely cited national template. Similar waterfront regeneration projects in Inverness and Dundee have also combined public amenity with flood resilience.
With environmental consultants now being sought, the design phase is the immediate next step. Construction timelines have not been announced.
