Nottingham Flood Alleviation Scheme - Lies, damn lies and statistics

While many residents were mopping up from the recent and ongoing flooding in Burton Joyce, BJRA was working to prevent future floods. Our Chair was one of four objectors who went to Long Eaton to present their cases when the application for the Nottingham Flood Alleviation Scheme was before the Planning Committee. We were objecting to the increased flood risk to village downstream of Nottingham as a result of the Flood Alleviation Scheme that will reduce flood risk to the Nottingham area. We were not asking that the FAS application be rejected - we just wanted a condition to be attached to planning permission that mitigation be guaranteed for the additional flood risk being caused.
No notice was taken of our concerns - after all the Council Officer's report to the Committee more-or-less said - "We'll get better protection from flooding as a result of this scheme - so just ignore that lot down the river." The bias in the report before the Council and the selection of convenient statistics was outrageous. You may be aware that Councillors never read the full documentation; they rely on their Officer's report and advice. So the content of the Officer's report is crucial.
But more outrageous is the fact that the developer who has proposed this scheme is the Environment Agency - the national guardian of flood risk - and the EA has been hiding the truth of the extent of additional flood risk to the downstream villages. The full facts about the impact on Burton Joyce only came to our attention this week.
The basic facts:
1. Development and flood risk. If any development will cause additional flood risk elsewhere, the developer is required to mitigate that risk. The Environment Agency is effectively the monitor of this and if it finds additional flood risk will be caused, it objects and recommends that mitigation be provided or that the application be refused. This is required by national planning policy.
2. Role of Environment Agency. In the case of the Nottingham FAS, the Environment Agency is the applicant - the developer. It has not applied the same rules to its own application for planning permission. In response to our request that it guarantee mitigation, it said that it would try to provide mitigation but could not give a guarantee. This was accepted by the Planning Authority - so the condition we requested was refused. If another developer had similarly refused or been unable to give a guarantee, the application would be refused on the basis of a recommendation from the EA.
3. Report to Erewash Council. In his report to the Planning Committee, Erewash's Officer stated that the scheme "will significantly improve the standard of flood protection to approximately 16,000 properties within the Nottingham flood cell" and that the increase in levels downstream of Nottingham will result in 39 additional properties downstream of Nottingham (of which 18 were in Burton Joyce) being at risk from flooding in 1:100 events.
4. Information withheld by the EA about additional flood risks to Burton Joyce. In its application, the EA included statistics of risk for BJ that referred only to part of the known flood risk area in the village. Since the application was submitted, we have been asking for the rest of the data. This was received eventually this week - only after the intervention of Vernon Coaker our MP - and it now emerges that the flood risk to the village is about three times that previously admitted by the EA. In their application the EA stated that 128 properties in BJ will be at additional flood risk. Their own statistics now show that the true figure is 398. The surveys to establish these facts were made early in 2006. So it is clear that the EA has withheld this information and misrepresented the risk in its applications for planning permission.
5. The selected statistics. Neither the EA’s application, nor the Erewash Officer's report to committee pointed out that the way in which the numbers of properties benefiting from the FAS was calculated was different from the way in which properties suffering from the effects of the FAS. If the same method had been applied, it should have been reported that between 1,500 - 2,000 properties downstream of Nottingham (of which 770 are in Burton Joyce) will pay the price of additional flood risk for the benefits of reduced flood risk to 16,000 properties in the Nottingham area.
Sorry about all the figures - but this is a case of "Lies, damn lies and statistics" - and the way in which the EA and Erewash have both presented evidence and arguments in ways to distort the facts about the positive and negative impacts of the Nottingham FAS.
And what is all this really about? Why is the EA pushing this scheme through and being permitted to do this against all the rules, not to mention the current reminders of the devastating impact of floods? Can it possibly be connected with the.provision of additional flood protection so that mega-buck developments planned for Nottingham can take place behind improved flood defences? And are villages literally being "sold down the river" to enable this? Surely not.