Plans for huge new Derbyshire bridge and bypass delayed to protect homes from further flooding
The final tweaked designs of a long-awaited Derbyshire bridge and bypass have been delayed to draw up plans to protect homes from worsened flooding. At a South Derbyshire District Council meeting last night (Tuesday, October 1), councillors deferred a decision on tweaked plans for the planned Walton bridge and bypass to the north and west of the village.
Countryside Partnerships, the landowner behind the 2,100-home former Drakelow Power Station site, must build a bridge and bypass by December 31, 2025, at the latest. It will connect Station Lane west of the village with Main Street to the north, crossing over the River Trent and replacing the notorious long-term “temporary” Bailey Bridge, which poses a no-longer-fit-for-purpose traffic bottleneck.
However, it is now up against time with work yet to start due to required changes to the designs to both bring them up to modern standards, widened culverts underneath to reduce blockages and so the route would remain above flood waters in the most extreme worst case scenario. The company said at the meeting that it would aim to start construction as soon as possible and ideally before Christmas and the wetter winter months.
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That start will now be in jeopardy due to the delaying of a decision on the tweaked designs, with the next planning meeting at which the plans would be discussed being in November, the meeting was told. If the company does not have the bridge and bypass built in time it will lose £1.5 million it agreed to place in an Escrow bank account as a sign of a commitment to follow through with the scheme.
A delay to the decision is so the developer can work with Walton-on-Trent Cricket Club and two homeowners who would see their properties more heavily impacted by flooding in a one-in-100-year flood event. The two affected homes do already flood during a one-in-100-year flood event but the planned scheme would worsen this situation – from one centimetre to 14 centimetres leaking into their properties.
Homeowners, said to be elderly and with long-term health conditions, are also said to have only been made aware of this situation by their neighbours following the publication of papers for this week’s meeting last week. Cllr Amy Wheelton said the residents had not been spoken to and would need to be on board with any agreed flood mitigation either on their property or affecting their homes.
A deadline which was to be agreed last night was a four-week period for the mitigation to be approved and finalised with the homeowners, which Cllr Wheelton felt was unreasonable due to the late notice of the issue itself. Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has objected to the scheme due to the requirement for an updated flood risk assessment which it was yet to receive.
This meant any approval of the scheme, with an objection from the Environment Agency, would need to be referred to the Secretary of State. The EA said it would need six weeks to assess the flood updated risk assessment, which councillors hoped could also be resolved with the delay of a decision on the scheme.
Council officers said the scheme could still be approved due to the “substantial benefits of the scheme clearly and convincingly outweighing the flood risk to a small number of properties”. The bridge would have a maximum height of seven metres above ground, with the design to keep the route above flood water by 1.5 metres in a one in 100-year flood event, with a maximum width of 13.25 metres.
Cllr Amy Wheelton told the meeting that flood water levels had risen to 3.88 metres in January and had risen over three metres nine times since 2012. She said the plans had already been delayed since May by the Environment Agency, having been submitted in March.
Cllr Wheelton said: “As councillors if we are going to flood someone’s home or a local amenity surely, we have a right to know residents have agreed to mitigations, they are possible and they are tied up in a legal agreement? These are our residents and two of the named properties I believe have residents with long-term health issues. Do officers expect us to pressure them like this.
“George Orwell in Animal Farm was right, some residents are more important than others. I am aghast at this application being brought to us like this, we all want the bridge built, but this committee needs to understand the consequences.
“We have waited 20 years, one month will not hurt.”
Steffan Saunders, the council’s head of planning, said the developer would be left with a “tight time frame” to build the bypass and bridge and could take the authority to appeal for non-determination. He said: “They are well aware of the pressure they face to meet their obligations for the bridge and bypass.”
The bridge and bypass around the village was last priced at £20 million but is now felt to be more, as discussed by Derbyshire County Council and Staffordshire County Council in January, with the developer offering the authorities the burden of building the scheme themselves for that original value, but both rejecting it due to the perceived higher cost.
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