Flooding - the proposal needs to go further
From "Strategic Objectives"
Go to the project
You say: “Ensure development is located in areas that are not liable to flooding…”
You should also be considering the impact of development on the flooding of other areas (down stream of the site).
You should be planning appropriate use of the flood plains, setting aside land specifically for that purpose. Quoting from the Environment Agency’s River Severn Catchment Management Plan ( https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c82dae5274a559005a5f6/River_Severn_Catchment_Management_Plan.pdf ):
“Encourage compatibility between urban open spaces and their ability to make space for rivers to expand as flood flows occur, particularly in key locations such as Cheltenham and Tewkesbury. One example of a flood- compatible use is playing fields. Appraise strategies to create ‘blue corridors’ by developing/redeveloping to link these flood-compatible spaces.”
The strategy should recognise the ongoing work of the Environment Agency to reduce the risk of flooding in Newtown and Tewkesbury ( https://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-planning/explorer/cycle-2/measure?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fenvironment.data.gov.uk%2Fflood-risk-planning%2Fdata%2Fmeasure%2F0203809030 ):
”Between 2021 and 2027, the Environment Agency will investigate the benefits of slowing the flow of tributaries into Tewkesbury and identify optimum locations for natural flood management measures and river restoration in the catchments of the Carrant Brook, Tirle Brook and River Swilgate in/upstream of Tewkesbury to inform future works to reduce flood risk and improve the environment in the Avon Warwickshire Management Catchment.”
Carrant brook flows through Ashchurch to the Avon just south of Mitton. In the 2007 floods (pictured above) it contributed significantly to the flooding of properties and businesses, not just around the Bredon Road, but more generally in Newtown and Tewkesbury. The authors of the Catchment Management Plan suggest that in a similar future flooding event, even more properties could be flooded due to changes arising from climate change.
“There is a relatively high level of fluvial flood risk, much of it in Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury with approximately 3,350 properties at risk in a 1% flood event.
"In the next 50 to 100 years, it is estimated that as a direct result of climate change and urbanisation the number of properties at risk from flooding in a 1% flood event will rise to approximately 4,160”.
The proposal for the Garden Communities includes around 5,000 homes being built within the drainage basin of Carrant Brook and Tirle Brook on land north of the A46. It is suggested that the SLP will set out the vision for development during the next 15 - 20 years. I suggest that the consequences could stretch much further into the future. Once building is allowed to the East of Aston Cross, it would likely continue up to Teddington Hands. That land would be seen as ideally suited to satisfying TBC’s requirement for an additional 500 new homes each year. During the next 50 years, Tewkesbury will be expected to provide around 30,000 additional homes. At the current density of 18.9 per ha, that would require around 1600 ha of land, which is around 10 times the area of land between Aston Cross and Teddington Hands, bounded by the A46, Bredon Road, Crashmore Lane and Carrant Brook. In fact not all of the 160 ha would be available for development as a tributary of Tirle Brook runs across the middle.
Government guidance on proposals for creating garden communities stresses the importance of communities being built on a sustainable scale – with infrastructure to allow the communities to function self-sufficiently on a day-to-day basis - with capacity for future growth to meet the evolving housing and economic needs of the local area.
The proposed Aston-Fields community does not therefore qualify as a Garden Community.
At the peak of the 2007 floods, the level of the water in Carrant Brook, and its flood plain, was at least 1.8m above normal, and it continued in that state for well over a week. Building in its drainage basin can only exacerbate the situation and I doubt that it would be economically viable to incorporate effective Sustainable Drainage Systems into any planning proposals for the area.
A much better use of this land would be to heed the messages from the Environment Agency:
“ • Development/redevelopment must be managed to minimise flood risks. Methods must be sustainable over the long-term. For example, making more space for rivers through urban areas via ‘blue corridors’ (i.e. Restoring access for floodwater onto key strips of floodplain. This requires redevelopment to be limited to flood-compatible land-uses e.g. parkland).
" • We plan to take opportunities to restore sustainable natural storage of floodwater on undeveloped floodplains, in order to reduce dependence on raised flood defences, as this is not sustainable in the long term, and to offset increasing flood risk from trends including climate change.”
When the full cost of flooding in Newtown and Tewkesbury is taken into account, that would a much better use of this land.
These are not just my concerns. Since the beginning of February 2024, a petition to this effect has been viewed over 3000 times and 270 people have put their names to it