In the aftermath of a major incident will action finally be taken to address Northamptonshire’s flooding problem?
Four days on from Storm Bert many parts of the county remain flooded. Will action now be taken to address these long standing and rising issues?
By Sarah Ward
Yesterday afternoon the county’s Local Resilience Forum (LRF) - the body coordinating the flood response - sent out a public statement to say that water levels at Yarwell Mill, a mobile home site north of Oundle, were expected to reach their peak last night.
Any evacuees will join the 1000 residents who have once again had to flee their homes at the now infamous Billing Aquadrome site.
This time, with the declaration of a major incident, the caravan site’s plight made headline national news. Yet this is the fourth time the residents, most of whom have no other place to live in, have had to evacuate to the sound of air raid like sirens, many having to camp down in a community centre in Weston Favell, not knowing when they can return to their homes.
The LRF says that 150 caravans have been flooded so far, with water levels in Northampton the highest ever recorded, higher than the 1998 floods in which two people lost their lives.
Built on a flood plain, the residents are so at risk because their homes are situated within the flood management system and in times of serious flood risk will often bear the brunt.
When the reservoir at the Washlands reaches a certain point, in order that the water does not back up into the town, the sluice gates open and the water is released into the Aquadrome.
Built in the 1980s and owned by the Mackness family, the site has since then been owned by various companies and now sits in the hands of the Meadow Bay Villages, who since they brought it this Spring have promised to plough millions into flood protection for residents.
Mike Reader MP for Northampton South visited the flooded sites in Northampton on Tuesday with leader of the West unitary Adam Brown, and while praising the response of all agencies involved, he said that now it is time for a review of the flood management system for Northampton, which was devised when the Brackmills industrial estate was developed in the 1980s.
He said:
“There needs to be a longer term solution, because if we continue to see more freak weather events (bearing in mind years ago there were whole years when flood defences weren’t triggered at all and Billing Aquadrome remained dry all year) which I think we will due to climate change, we need a solution that recognises that.”
He said he would now ‘stick my oar in’ with the county’s multi agency flood group and try to have more focus on prevention between flood events.
He said:
“I think the combined effort is phenomenal when we see an incident and outside of that, how do we combine our efforts to make sure that we drive as much effort into prevention as well as resolution of flooding?
He says he has had a conversation with environment secretary Steve Reed (who visited the area following the September floods) about the specific challenges that Billing presents and himself and fellow Northampton MP Lucy Rigby have been meeting with the floods minister.
And next week he has arranged a meeting for all MPs whose constituency sits along the Nene catchment to raise awareness and approach the flood management as a collective.
(As NN Journal has reported previously, Northants is part of a regional flood committee with Lincolnshire and Rutland, which decides where the money for flood management goes).
Chair of the place scrutiny committee on West Northamptonshire Council Cllr Andre Gonzalez de Savage says that his committee will now look into the issue. A check of the committee’s minutes shows that the issue of flood management has not been discussed by the committee since September last year. The plight of those living in potential danger at Billing Aquadrome has not been looked at. Meanwhile over the county border in Rutland, the council’s scrutiny committee has just published a comprehensive review of the area’s response to January’s Storm Henk floods, making a series of recommendations about changes that need to be made.
Cllr Gonzalez, who is from the ruling Conservative party, said:
“There are a lot of areas that need to be looked at carefully and to understand what is currently in place and take a review on that. The risk to life is obviously by far the greatest thing that we would look at and what is being activated and what can we do to prevent and what is in the council’s powers to prevent.”
The West unitary is the local lead flood authority, which means it has responsibility for managing flood risk and developing a strategy. After the September floods it said it would update the current strategy which dates back to 2016 and has not been changed since the unitary came into being.
The flooding has been across most parts of the whole county, with significant flooding in Corby and parts of Kettering, Wellingborough.
The North unitary authority set up an emergency base at its Corby Cube headquarters on Sunday night and other flood assistance centres were set up at the Venture Park in Kettering and the village hall in Nassington for Yarwell Mill residents.
Since the authority was set up in 2021 an overarching flood strategy has not been devised and some of the flood plans for areas are more than a decade old.
Leader of the Labour opposition, Cllr Matt Keane said his councillors have a series of questions that they will take to full council next week and said issues around drain clearance needed to be looked at.
This morning there are 150 flood warnings across the country, with five remaining at along the Nene at Cogenhoe, Great Doddington, Billing Aquadrome, Wellingborough and at Towcester. 11 other flood warnings remain in Northants including parts of the River Tose, River Ise and the Welland Valley.
Read our previous reports on the issue
Will the government now find the cash to improve Northamptonshire’s flood defences?
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We need a solution that benefits the whole of the Nene and Welland river systems.
Dealing with the climate change will be a very long term solution so in the meantime we need to slow the flow of water upstream as has been done with the River Parrott in Somerset so it is evened out over the year.
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