A company providing workspace for dozens of businesses has completed a major improvement project at a reservoir from which it draws water.

Meltham-based Towndoor Ltd has devoted four years of effort to ensuring that the reservoir at Meltham Mills meets new safety requirements from the Environment Agency.

The agency introduced new safety standards for many of the country’s reservoirs following an incident in which sustained rainfall and a cloud burst over Sheffield brought a reservoir near Meadowhall close to failing – threatening human life and risking a main electric grid substation.

The Environment Agency increased the required safety margins needed on all reservoirs over a certain size, insisting that they be designed to cope with a wave surge generated by a 1 in 10000 year storm event.

In a routine inspection of Meltham Mills reservoir in 2010, a flood risk assessment said that the reservoir failed the stringent new requirements.

As the then owner of the reservoir, Windy Bank Fishing Club, was unable to meet the costs of the safety improvement works needed to bring the reservoir within the new guidelines, Towndoor was declared to be “joint undertakers” because the company and some of is tenants draw water from the reservoir – and was held liable for both designing and implementing safety improvement works .

Four years later – after two re-designs, a full ecological survey, the relocation of a badger sett, the essential removal of a number of mature trees under guidance from Kirklees tree officers and obtaining planning permission for the works – a design was approved minimizing the amount of concrete to be used and utilizing modern geotextile materials and stone gabion structures instead of concrete walls to speed up naturalisation of the site.

Towndoor Ltd took ownership of the site and the design was finally completed and project managed by the company’s in-house architectural services and property manager Nick Charlton. Work restarted in June last year following a further delay when the route of an old footpath was found to cross the site.

Towndoor director Dan Bamforth said: “The works are now entering their final stages of forming the lower channel works and landscaping, but completion has been further delayed by the onset of ascertained period of heavy rainfall.”

The completed works – costing over £750,000 and providing long-term safety from potential serious flooding to the community and residents of Meltham Mills – will include lowering the top water level and increasing the freeboard by increasing the southern weir from eight metres long to 24 metres long; providing a 30 metres by 11 metres approach channel to accommodate the new weir with a 750mm deep silt collection trap at the point of entry of Greave Dyke to aid water flow and a 52 metres long tapered slipway with a secondary weir lined with stone gabions down its length to control the discharge water flow.

The work will also provide a 100 metres long section of lower channel with reinforced earth sides formed in varying flood plateau to cater for varying degrees of storm event – from a one in 10 years event through to a one in 100 year event up to the full one in 10,000 years required by the new rules.

It also includes repairs to a Victorian foot bridge and the re-establishment of a defined footpath through the ancient woods complete with stepping stones over the new lower channel section.

The project will also include a small memorial garden in memory of Towndoor founder Stuart Bamforth, for the benefit of tired walkers.