To receive presentations from Wiltshire Council’s Flood Resilience Officer and from parish councils working on flood plans.
Minutes:
The Board received a presentation from Renate Malton, Flood Resilience Officer, who’s role included:
• Work with town and parish councils to encourage them to make flood plans offering help and information.
• Developing online resources for town and parishes to help with flood plans
• Input to Neighbourhood Plans
• Land Drainage & Ordinary Watercourses
• Operational Flood Working Group (OFWG) meetings
• Responding to enquires around flooding/drainage
Questions and comments included:
· In Alderbury there were issues with groundwater flooding. The current issues as they stand today need to be included in consideration in planning matters when Wessex Water & the Environment Agency were consulted. The data used was from the 1970s and since that time, water levels had changed considerably.
Answer: The Council, as the planning authority has a responsibility to consider groundwater, however if an application is refused permission, the applicant can go to appeal where the decision can be overruled by the inspectorate. We cannot stop an application if it goes to appeal. It is important that the parishes record the areas of known flooding, by taking pictures and logging evidence to be used when a planning application comes up.
· Winterbourne PC had difficulty with the Environment Agency (EA) not protecting the river through the parish. There had been incidents where residents had extended structures into the water and the removal of those had not been enforced by the EA. Was there a definitive map of where the ditches were?
Answer: That class of river remains the responsibility of the EA. Attend the next OFWG meeting where there will be a representative from the EA to answer questions. Also, keep a report of any issues and take to the working group. I use google maps and we have historic maps to view. When we have a query, we go back to the old maps to check. I can request an AO map and you could then carry out the work to edit accordingly.
· The OWFG are online and always very informative. Landford have worked hard on their plan. What help was available for places with prior history of flooding and what was PEAS?
Answer: PEAS was the Parish Emergency Assistance Scheme, which was set up a few years ago to provide gel sacks, signage and fluorescent tabards etc for flood wardens. Town and parish councils could apply to PEAS for these items and each year all clerks were contacted and asked if any top ups were required. A note of caution, was that if distributing gel sacks, these should be done so in a fair way, so it was recommended that parishes had a fair policy set out to ensure that provision was available to all in need and to prevent repeat requests from the same households who after an initial flood, should be encouraged to take preventative measures for future years.
· Alderbury PC had experienced a number of persistent issues regarding a ditch along the road. It was highly dangerous as there was a blocked drain in a residential road which resulted in increased ponds of water across the road and footpath, with mud across the road. The issue had been raised repeatedly across the last few years with people at the council, however no department seemed to want to take responsibility. We need someone who had the authority to move things along
Answer: We are a small team and trying hard to get around to all the issues. We have 2 drain engineers for the whole county.
The Chairman then introduced speakers from Firsdown and West Dean Parish Council’s who shared information on local projects and experiences.
Firsdown Parish Council – Simon Brown (Chairman)
Firsdown Road was 1 mile long and was higher at one end and had drains which did not meet current standards and the outfall pipe had collapsed. As a result, water would collect at the lowest point and cause surface water flooding which then ran across a garden.
Working with Wiltshire Council over the last 3 years in hope to improve the situation with a drainage system, a trench was dug over the summer, for water to flow into the perforated pipe which would slowly drain into the land. Unfortunately, the scheme did not work, so the drainage team came back and modified the scheme further which it was hoped would rectify the issue.
Simon advised other parishes to speak to the drainage team to discuss possible options, however he noted that schemed such as the one in Firsdown take time and involved road closures and civil engineering.
West Dean Parish Council – John Camilleri
West Dean River Group had been working on a flood mitigation project to help manage future flooding to the village. There had been devastating flooding during 2014 which led to houses being evacuate.
The scheme was designed to prevent the flooding in a particular area and was aimed at increasing the flow rate of the river to prevent silting up. The parish council had been raising funding since 2014. Work would start in January 2025, with completion planned for April 2025. The river would be narrowed to increase the water flow, discouraging the formation of weeds.
The Chairman thanked all of the speakers for sharing information on what was available and urged anyone interested to attend the Environmental Action Flooding Event on 19 November 2024, 10.00am – 3.00pm in the Guild Hall Salisbury.