a) Questions from the public (for a period of up to 15 minutes).
b) Questions from Members with prejudicial interests (for a period of up to 15 minutes).
Minutes:
The Chairman confirmed that one Public Question had been submitted in line with the Council’s Constitution and that this was for him as Leader of the Council to respond to.
The questioner asked if following the flood events across the District during December 2019, could the Leader of the Council or relevant Cabinet Member outline the process used to ensure Arun and partner agencies and authorities would sit down to review and understand what had happened to include the causes, impacts, possible solutions and consequences for sites proposed or permitted for development. Would he also outline how such discussions might review the evidence base used to inform the Local Plan and the assumptions made within it, particularly with regard to the frequency and severity of these events and the mitigations required?
The Leader of the Council, Councillor Dr Walsh, responded stating that the Council’s engineering service had collated information of the various issues reported to the Council. In the main these were localised issues relating to a specific set of circumstances such as an unmaintained ditch by the riparian landowner or an undersized culvert under a new access. Advise on resolving these matters would be provided to landowners as appropriate. The areas of land that were subject to more extensive flooding were consistent with the Environment Agency’s flood maps and were not proposed for new residential development. For those areas where development was proposed it would be the responsibility of the applicants to submit detailed surface water drainage schemes for consideration having regard to the advice that was already available from the Council and national guidelines.
The Council in reviewing the Local Plan would take on board the latest information available to inform any future decisions. Experience had shown over recent years that the drainage schemes that had been implemented on new developments had worked as expected. The issues that had arisen in the past had tended to be in more established residential areas where a lack of maintenance of the ditch network by the relevant landowners was typically the problem. The Council had worked closely with the County Council to resolve these issues.
The Chairman then invited the questioner to ask a supplementary question.
The questioner referred to an example of extreme flooding at Sefter Field along the Pagham Road which had been closed on 8 January 2020. This flooding situation had been featured in the Bognor Regis Observer showing a picture of residents sailing a dinghy across this section of field. This field was adjacent to a development site in the Council’s Local Plan, so it was felt that residents needed to receive a better explanation about their concerns of developing on what they saw as a flood plain.
Councillor Dr Walsh confirmed that he has seen this article and he asked the Director of Place to provide the response. He confirmed that the photographic image of a person on a sail board was an old picture that had been around for several years and was not related to the flooding experience this winter. He stated that part of the issue was that ditches had not been maintained by riparian owners. Also, it was confirmed that this site was not in a flood plain and that an inspection that had taken place before Christmas saw no evidence of flooding on this site. Yes, there was flooding in the Pagham area, but these seemed to be a specific issue in relation to Highways rather than the development site in question.