The recent flooding in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, which saw the market town of Tewkesbury completely inundated in scenes reminiscent of the floods in and around Lewes in 2000, left Gordon Brown’s new government in a particularly sticky situation.
A new green paper prepared by New Labour, announcing that it was ‘unrealistic’ to avoid building new developments on flood plains, could not have been timed worse. Brown was forced to backtrack before the paper had even been released. In his first official press conference he promised that any new developments would be subject to stringent new guidelines, with the Environment Agency ‘tightening up the advice about new building’ with that advice ‘to be heeded whenever there was a question mark.’ He also pledged £200 million more to be set aside for flood protection.
Meanwhile, predictably, the new Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper, announced that anti-development protestors should not ‘play politics’ with the floods to try and halt new developments, and that some of the new proposed housing which had good flood defences in place should be built anyway.
While Lewesians nervously await possible flood warnings as the rainiest summer on record continues to shed its load, the Lewes District Council planning department will not be happy that they have an increasingly hot potato of a development proposal - the Angel Property bid to turn the North Street area into ‘the Phoenix Quarter’ - sitting in their laps. A development to be situated in a flood plain right next to the centre of a town which is periodically devastated by floods. Does this constitute a Brownian question mark? (Oops, sorry Yvette). Finally, while we’re on the subject, how much of the extra £200 million will come this way?