'Flooding in Northants will get worse' says councillor

A councillor has warned that flooding in Northamptonshire will ‘only get worse’.

Both Wellingborough and Northampton have been hit in recent years by major floods and now Cllr Andy Mercer has warned the situation in the county will only continue to get worse, with more house building in flood risk areas storing up issues for the next generation.

At the recent full council meeting of Northamptonshire County Council Cllr Mercer said: “Flooding is going to get worse. It is going to affect Northamptonshire severely. It is going to cause us significant problems in the future and we can’t protect against it as much as we should because the costs will be just too high.

“We are going to have to end up having to follow the strategy of flood resilience which is not anywhere near as good.

“We as a nation are allowing more and more houses to be built in flood risk areas and the areas of flood risk are going to increase.

“So instead of bequeathing a better situation to our children we are likely to bequeath a slightly worse situation. We should be much more tough.

“The government is proposing changing the way housing land is allocated. I would suggest this authority puts to the government that a high priority should be placed on avoiding putting those housing zones on areas that are at risk of flooding now or in 50 years time.”

At the meeting the county’s climate change strategy for 2020 to 2023 was discussed. The report states that the biggest climate change risk to the county is flooding and said significant progress that been made towards making the county more flood resilient by a number of measures including advice on sustainable urban drainage systems on new developments, community flood resilience projects, the implementation of property flood resistance measures, and natural flood management landscape interventions.

However it spelt out the current dangers associated with climate change in the county. It states: “In Northamptonshire, large swathes of agricultural land and heavily urbanised town centres provide the ideal conditions for surface water flooding. Indeed, surface water flooding is the greatest source of flood risk posed to Northamptonshire’s residents, with almost 57,000 residential properties already predicted to be at risk without taking into account future climate change. With a rapid speed of onset, surface water flooding can be difficult to respond to, particularly if pre-emptive measures have not been taken to mitigate its risk .”

This week the county authority has called on people to sign up as flood wardens and become involved in flood risk management in their area. Communities can also sign up for funding to help carry out flood risk surveys and develop long term solutions.

A number of businesses in Wellingborough town centre were flooded when a month’s worth of rain fell in one hour last month. A flood investigation has begun into the cause.