500 homes planned for flood area

A DEVELOPER planning to build more than 500 houses in an area of Hereford that has seen widespread flooding this week says it intends to press on with the plan.

Bloor Homes’ outline planning application to develop land at Lower Bullingham to the southeast of the city, crossed by Lower Bullingham Lane and alongside Watery Lane, was submitted over four years ago but remains undetermined.

Herefordshire Council told the company in October that it will have to submit an environmental risk assessment for the six-hectare section, noting that part of it falls within flood zones 2 (‘medium’) and 3 (‘high’ probability).

The council said a flood risk assessment must “demonstrate that the development will be safe over its lifetime including the impacts of climate change and will not act to increase flood risk elsewhere”.

A spokesperson from Bloor Homes has now said: “We are extremely conscious of, and sensitive to, the flood events that impact upon Lower Bullingham during times of excessive rainfall.

“This is a key consideration of the flood risk assessment and sustainable drainage strategy which will accompany our forthcoming mixed-use planning application for the allocated Lower Bullingham site.”

Earlier this week a nearby resident of Lower Bullingham Lane, Alex Finley, whose property had again flooded, told the Hereford Times: “As well as putting the right stuff in place, they also have to think of how it is going to affect the people around them.”

FARMERS are likely to see “huge losses” after a relentless season of storms, one flood-hit grower has said, as the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said there should be compensation for those holding flood water in their fields.

Peter Gadd, chairman of the NFU’s crops board in the East Midlands, has told of how he believes he will have lost about £15,000 in the current floods.

Meanwhile Debbie Wilkins, a farmer in Gloucestershire, has decided it is too risky to grow crops in her fields alongside the River Severn.

Farms across England, as well as more than 1,000 homes, have been affected, and the NFU is calling on the Government to make changes to flood defences and support schemes to better protect rural businesses.

Ms Wilkins says she leaves some of her fields to work as floodplains, which she said stores water upstream that would otherwise pass through urban areas and put properties at risk, and provides a habitat for wildlife.

She said: “Probably about a third of the farm, about 300 acres, is flood plains and that’s all under water at the moment.

“But those are flood plain meadows and they do flood regularly. I think it used to be every four or five years and now it’s two or three times a year, so it seems to be increasing.

“They’re species-rich grassland that we cut hay from in the summer and graze cattle in after, so they’re quite resilient because of that.”

Ms Wilkins hopes the new support measures announced by the Government on Thursday, designed to reward farmers for maintaining habitats, will make her method more profitable and said it could encourage other farmers growing crops in flood plains to follow suit.

Mr Gadd, a farmer in Nottinghamshire and chairman of the NFU’s crops board in the East Midlands, said Storm Babet and Storm Ciaran in the autumn hit within 10 days of him having sown