Martin tells minister: watch out for Warden Hill (Cheltenham Liberal Democrats)

Cheltenham Liberal Democrats <info@cheltlibdems.org.uk>

Martin tells minister: watch out for Warden Hill

February 25, 2010 3:48 PM

CHELTENHAM MP Martin Horwood today addressed the National Flood Forum's annual conference in Birmingham and called for a change in policy and in mindset from planners and politicians over flooding. He was speaking in his capacity as Lib Dem national spokesman on flooding to an audience including floods minister Huw Irranca-Davies MP and Environment Agency chief Lord Smith. Martin highlighted the nonsense of one government department - Defra - spending hundreds of millions of pounds to reduce flood risk, only for another - the Department for Communities & Local Government - to do the exact opposite. And he criticised the Conservative Party for missing the chance to back a change in the law governing building on flood plains.

Martin reminded the conference that the Lib Dems had consistently called for more spending on flood defences when the money had been available and he called for a series of reforms to planning law, including

• landscape-scale planning policies that looked at managing flood risk over a wide area, using the natural landscape wherever possible

• a presumption against planning permission on the flood plain

• stronger powers for local authorities to refuse planning permission on grounds of flood risk

'The problem with planning permission in flood risk areas' said Martin, 'is not just that it puts new homes in harm's way, potentially making them uninsurable as well. It's also that more and more urbanisation increases the flood risk downhill and downstream too. It is crazy that an area like Warden Hill in Cheltenham has been identified as at risk and Defra and the Environment Agency are spending thousands on reducing that flood risk through new flood defences, that another government department is setting about putting that flood risk right back up again. The Department for Communities and Local Government has come along with its Regional Spatial Strategy and identified the green fields at Leckhampton immediately uphill as an area of search for 1,300 new houses even though we know that land holds water back from Warden Hill.'

To applause from the audience, Martin also argued for more action on insurance to return to a policy of shared risk not one that excluded anyone with the wrong postcode from flood insurance altogether.

'I pushed both these issues to votes during the debates on the Floods Bill in parliament' said Martin 'and I was very disappointed that I didn't get support from the Conservative Party on either issue. Without cross-party support, there was no chance of getting the changes through and we now know the Bill won't be amended in the House of Lords so the chance has been missed.'