£40m Potter star’s plans hit a flood of trouble

AMASSING £20 million by the time you’re 21 may sound like a passport to a life untainted by strain and strife. But Harry Potter star Rupert Grint may beg to differ — even though, at 35, his fortune has reportedly swollen to well over £40 million.

I can disclose that his plans for Kimpton Grange, the 18th-century Hertfordshire pile he snapped up for £5.4 million in 2009 but which he’s never lived in, have been deluged with derision — by the local Flood Authority.

In a scathing appraisal, it says that Grint’s proposals are ‘likely to increase flood risk’, adds that three ‘infiltration’ tests were not completed, and points out that he failed to provide ‘sufficient information’ about ‘ watercourses that could be utilised for the discharge of surface water’.

But that’s just for starters. Grint has bold plans for the 23-acre site, which includes a lake, landscaped gardens, a staff flat, two cottages, an outdoor pool with its own pavilion and a floodlit tennis court. Grint envisages converting a house, The Lodge, into six flats, and building four terrace dwellings and five detached ones.

The trouble is, the Flood Authority says, objecting to the plan, that he hasn’t provided ‘any information’ about the possibility of ‘connecting to a surface water sewer or a highway drain’ or about why ‘rainwater re-use’ goes unmentioned.

‘Connections to foul sewer are normally not agreed in principle,’ adds the authority, though exceptions can be made only when ‘no other method of drainage’ is possible and it will ‘not increase flooding elsewhere’.

J K Rowling has had emphatic differences in opinion with Grint and some of the other Hogwartians, but perhaps she endorses something he said last year: ‘ It can be cathartic watching terrible things happen to other people.’