The recent floods have dominated the news this week – the pictures of flooded homes have been awful. I can’t imagine the trauma and anxiety those who have been affected must be going through particularly with more rain on the way.

Although I was fortunate not to have a home flooded, the brook at the bottom of the garden did flood washing away the majority of my vegetables and unfortunately, drowning a number of our chickens before we could reach them. This in itself was upsetting enough for us but it was the speed the brook rose that was astonishing. It must have come up four foot within the space of half an hour.
The recent events raise a number of planning related questions – Why are we still building within the flood plain and why are planners still ignoring more sustainable drainage systems? Part of the problem surely, is the fact that as towns and cities continue to expand, rainwater is channelled away as quickly as possible – This inevitably leads to more flash floods. Instead of trying to channel water to the nearest watercourse we should be looking at soak-away solutions or storage, such as rainwater harvesting. The other issue I have is that many of our gardens and lawns, which act as natural soak-aways, continue to be concreted over ( accommodating the drive for instance) or have other hard surfaces that replace the lawn. During the last 10 years there has been a huge rise in people replacing grass for low maintenance gravel features which can only contribute to our flooding problems.
Perhaps a bigger issue is the continuing developments on the flood plain itself. Recent pictures have shown housing developments which are just 3-4 years old, immersed in flood waters. Why on earth do planners allow it? Climate change is going to exacerbate the flooding problem. We need to look very careful at any kind of development on the flood plain in the future.