Development Control this week - flood plain developments?

This weeks' Development Control meeting on Tuesday was the first time we finished before lunch - great! It also contained as usual a number of controversial planning applications - the public galleries had a fair few people come to listen to us.

One of the issues that came up this week was regarding developments in areas at risk from flooding - now the Council has a policy in this area and I don't doubt that it is fine - but I am concerned that developments can still go ahead on flood plains. Does this really make sense? It appears in some cases it can be argued that it does. See Citizen article report.

I will be researching more. Certainly things are improving from the days when the Council chose to ignore the Environment Agency's advice and went ahead with 40 odd houses on a flood plain at Ebley - soon it will not be possible to ignore the EA.

Anyhow after the Development Control meeting I sat in on the Policy Panel on the Regional Spatial Strategy. I am not on that committe so couldn't speak - frustrating but the Committee was good enough to agree to accept some additional thoughts in writing. You can view those under Reports at: http://www.glosgreenparty.org.uk

The RSS is a critical document. I hope very much that the Committee will take the concerns seriously. Certainly it has been good to see cross-party rejection of the County Council policy to turn Stroud into one of the key centres ie the place to put thousands of more homes. The Green party will be doing it's own submission to the consultation - it covers many issues and I've already been spending many hours on it!

I started this piece talking about flooding - the RSS have a great policy on it - and if enacted properly should mean that it will rule out the siting of nuclear power stations or nuclear waste depositories along much of the coasts in the South West. Nirex, Britain's nuclear waste management agency has already reported in it’s summary of 'climate and landscape change' that out of 11 of the current nuclear sites by 2100, five years before the disposal repository should be full, four sites will be vulnerable to flooding, and three others vulnerable to coastal erosion. All three current nuclear sites in the South West - which are tipped by some to be sites for new nuclear reactors - are flood risk - Berkeley and Olbury are cited as “high risk of flooding” while Hinkley is at risk of 'flooding and erosion'.

We'll see!