Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme
Response to the Consultation on Planning Application MW.0028/18 by the Directors of Hogacre Common Eco Park C.I.C. (Bold sections highlighted by website editor)
The seven directors of Hogacre Eco Park all have their homes in the Oxford floodplain six of whom live in the flood risk zones in South and West Oxford.
As such they are keen to see measures that reduce the risk of their homes being flooded. As directors of the Eco Park however they are very aware of the ecological sensitivity of the Thames floodplain, its enormous contribution to the landscape and surroundings of the beautiful and historic City of Oxford and also its potential as one of the havens of British wildlife diversity (alongside the Wash fenlands aknd the Somerset levels and other major river floodplain systems), at a time when species diversity and reduction and possible extinctions is of major concern both locally and on a planetary basis. They are therefore very keen to see mitigation of flooding to built-up areas but also that any solution is far sited and worthy of the heritage, landscape and ecology of Oxford and enhances its special character.
Back Story
The proposal for a flood channel originated in 2008 in the OFRMS recommendations. Since that time understanding of the nature of flooding and the possibility of holistic solutions involving measures relating to the wider catchment have gained a lot of ground. Since the Environment and Rural Affairs Committee reports 2014-2017 favouring whole catchment solutions, the Government response has been to acknowledge this and commission more research on how this can be achieved in the larger river systems without recourse to highly engineered solutions, some measures are already being worked through in the Thames catchment with initiatives like upstream storage on the Cherwell and measures to slow high water flows along the Ock. Whole catchment proposals envisage a wide spectrum of measures involving such as tree planting, changes to agricultural practices to reduce water and soil run-off from agricultural land, upstream storage and creation of fenland, ponds and scrapes
The Oxford Flood Alleviation proposals and studies however were based on only three options initially which has now been elaborated to six– do nothing, do minimum, raised defences only, new channel only, new channel with raised defences, new channel, and raised defences with additional upstream storage. The option arrived at was a new channel with raised defences. Other whole catchment measures were never evaluated in spite of changed wisdom about the need for whole catchment solutions and presumably because a momentum of work had built up around the 2008 engineering solution.
Overall Benefits and Dis-benefits of the Current Proposal.
Although the Environmental Statement involves elaborate ways of weighting the advantages of the scheme against the dis-benefits, this in our view is very subjective and if we had the resources and were to conduct an analysis as detailed as that our weightings would be considerably different.
The main benefit of the scheme is the protection it predicts for the built up area. It says that 2,500 properties are at risk of a 1 in 100 years flooding, the present proposal aims to reduce the likelihood of all this properties flooding but only 1,200 benefitting from the 1 in 100 year benchmark. With climate change the properties at risk could increase to 3,431 so that even less would be protected from the scheme. So this scheme is not necessarily the best solution and will not help give full protection to many properties especially as years go by.
Besides possible progress being made towards whole catchment solutions, there is also a need to protect and make more resilient buildings. This is occurring in the flood areas in Oxford when improvements and extensions are made to houses requiring planning permission are to required raise their level above projected floods. This could be extended by making more improvement work done to make properties more flood resilient by adapting building regulations and raising awareness in the building trades and amongst owners of how flood resilience can be increased during new work. Also research by the property Resilience Action Plan 2018 by DEFRA by the Insurance Task Group is poised to recommend and support insurance under Flood Re that will no longer replace damage by like for like but will ensure flood resistant repair and replacement. We also support measures to embank vulnerable properties and welcome these as part of a Flood Alleviation Scheme for Oxford. The current proposal for a flood channel are derived from historical momentum may no longer be seen as the most beneficial and the ecological and landscape disadvantages which are great could well be avoided.
The major dis-benefits from a landscape and ecological are in our view as follows:-
- The loss of Seacourt Nature Reserve
- The detrimental effect on Hinksey Meadows
- The loss of character by tree loss along Willow Walk
- The loss of communally planted trees in Kendall Copse
- The detrimental erect on Kennington Pit.
- The effect on Hogacre Common which we detail below as directors and guardians of the Eco Park and which we feel we have considerable knowledge and experience to make detailed comments on.
- We are concerned that the plans to improve the floodplain are not enough to compensate for the above losses especially as their implementation is extremely problematic and not fully or adequately explained in the application. We feel that initiatives to improve the floodplain are something that is growing and would occur anyway in time if the flood channel was found not to be the best solution to the problems of Thames flooding. Amongst the largely unresolved problems regarding ecological improvement is land ownership of the application area and areas outside it and an Environmental Action Plan and Landscape and Habitats Management Plan that fail to properly address responsibility, expertise and agency.
Hogacre Common Eco Park
In response to our concern at the lack of consideration in the Environmental Impact Scoping proposals of the impact of the proposals on Hogacre Common Eco Park the Scoping Opinion from Oxfordshire County Council of 8.12.16 stated
“Any potential impacts on the Hogacre Common Eco Park and land owned and maintained by the Oxford Preservation Trust, undeveloped land between the main railway line and the A34 and land downstream of the proposed scheme should be assessed”
We are not happy as directors that this has been undertaken.
Hogacre Eco Park is located on the former Corpus Christ College Sports Ground which consisted of a large area of limited species sports ground grasses which had been treated over the years with herbicides and pesticides. The Eco Park is now run by a community interest company with permissive public access and has been in existence for six years. It is bounded on three sides by Thames water courses, the Hinksey stream to the west, the Eastwyke ditch to the east and the Hogacre ditch to the north. The aims of the Park are to encourage sustainability and community and educational involvement in the development and enjoyment of this Eco Park, a detailed description of the facilities it offers to community and public is outlined below. In relation to the planning application, however, there is some concern that the proposals do not present facilitating public access and enjoyment of the proposed channel area or the wider area where environmental improvement action is proposed. Given this the directors consider that the utmost is done to ensure no detriment at all to Hogacre Common because it gives permissive access to all by foot and is being run as an natural area of the floodplain for people’s education and enjoyment. In landscape terms too it is extremely attractive as an area of open meadow surrounding and enclosed by mature woodland, as well as newly planted areas and existing river courses and as such requires full protection against changing hydrological and ecological conditions.
One of our iconic features is our wind turbine, transported with great difficulty to its location, as access to the Park over the railway line from South Oxford presented great problems. The former sports pavilion has a café on Sundays in summer and is let out for the rest of the year for community and educational activities in line with the ethos of the park. The operation and development of the Park has been very much in line with its location in the floodplain and to help people to understand the special character of the floodplain at Hogacre. There are around seven bee hives which are located on a raised platform above flood level. At the moment the central part of the park is being encouraged to become a floodplain wild flower meadow, with the essential mowing regime and we have invested in a hay bailer. A thousand new saplings were planted with strong community involvement at the start of the park which will be part of a sustainable timber regime – hazel coppice is included and we have charcoal burners to demonstrate their possibilities.
We have a Forest School area in the woods fringing the Eastwyke ditch which is used by local schools. We host a Community Garden at OxGrow which is a great attraction to the site and has a similar ethos to us besides hosting local people it is also very tied up with both universities of Oxford and it is patronised by people from all over the world studying and working in Oxford. We are concerned that in the Landscape and Habitats and Management plan it states that allotments and gardens within and adjacent to the scheme are considered to be of negligible value (Habitats Survey and Natural vegetation classification Section 5.0 Allotments and Gardens) and we certainly do not accept that in relation to our community garden and other incidentally cultivated areas of the park like our orchard of local varieties of Oxfordshire trees.
We have an orchard of young Oxfordshire apple tree species. We are in the process of developing interpretative boards to explain all this to visitors and the different areas – for example we not only have drier type floodplain meadow ecology, we also have an area for much wetter plants beside the Hinksey stream, and there are opportunities here to interpret the flora and fauna of the stream itself. We have future proposals for the former hard tennis courts which we hope could involve demonstrating technologies that derive from floodplain ecology and agriculture. All our efforts now are organic and exclude all use of herbicides and pesticides.
All this has taken a great deal of voluntary community effort but above all it can be seen as educating and involving a local, national and international community in the beauty and natural features of this area of the floodplain.
Flooding is something that we recognise as integral to our Park – our main concern are the dry periods and how changed to water levels brought about by the two stage channel could affect our ecology and possibly undo hard work and community effort that has gone into the creation of our park to date.
Since reading the previous hydrological report (ESI – Oxford FAS Groundwater Flood Modelling 2016) and the Final Hydrology Report 2016 we have been very concerned about since and because we understand the water level of the Hinksey Stream and Eastwyke ditch would be restricted during dry periods in order that the channel would have sufficient flow through it to discourage silting up and vegetation growth. In meetings with the Environment Agency we were informed that studies indicated our water table could drop by as much as 50cm. Located on the lower gravel terrace Hogacre Common, although in the flood plain, is subjected to long periods of low water levels in the summer months. We asked for bore holes or dip wells that extended into the gravel (during dry periods the water table is always way down beneath the subsoil in the gravel) so that there could be definitive data about the special hydrology of Hogacre. Dry periods are particular difficult in the OxGrow garden -some summers it is necessary to water nearly every day to ensure crop productivity. This is very problematical as OxGrow gardeners have a lot of other commitments. The young saplings in our orchard could be vulnerable and our differing areas of ecological diversity which are to be highlighted on our information boards could be affected, particularly our area of wetter vegetation.
The Environment Agency took a long time to recognise our concerns in spite of our mention by Oxfordshire County Council in their Scoping Opinion. In the end dip wells which did not extend into the gravel were installed in April 2017 by which time there would be little to record until late autumn because the water table was well down in the gravel. We have not been informed of the readings yet and any study on ecological impact of hydrological levels should of course be conducted several years before satisfactory proposals and conclusions can be arrived at if the implications for Hogacre are to be properly assessed.
The Environmental Impact Study( Environmental Statement 8.22 Page 166 Local designated Sites Hogacre Eco park) states that Hogacre Eco Park is outside the scheme area but within the area where groundwater levels could be affected. It states the groundwater model shows that there will be no significant effect on groundwater due to the scheme with minor reduction in, levels in a dry summer, and thus no change to the species composition of Hogacre’s wildflower meadow, woodlands or cultivated land. However we are not satisfied with this dismissal of dry water conditions as the groundwater and hydrological studies specifically state no dry water model was developed for Hogacre (only for Oxford Meadows SAC, Iffley Meadows SSSI and Hinksey Meadows MG4 grassland). Also there has been no detailed study of our special ecological and vegetative area. The technical note on an FAS groundwater model for Hogacre recommends too that a detailed model of Hogacre and Hinksey Meadows is not undertaken at this time (Groundwater Update Appendix C Technical Note Oxford FAS review on modelling approach at Hinksey Meadow and Hogacre Park). They suggest instead only that a monitoring strategy is developed.
Taking into consideration all this, it should also be noted that the Environmental Impact Assessment stated clearly that there are a number of uncertainties with respect to the habitats that might form within and adjacent to the new channels, which need to be considered when trying to predict habitat gains, There is also a difficulty in predicting precisely which habitats will form within the site and how new habitats are likely to evolve over time (Environmental Statement 4.4 Page 61). This means that any compensatory attempts to install new floodplain ecologies or relocate them cannot be guaranteed to be successful whereas there will be definite damaging effects on some of the existing nature and landscape areas.
We feel we are at the forefront of a movement to restore public awareness and involvement in nature and the beauty of the floodplain. We feel our interests have not been adequately taken into account as was asked for in the scoping opinion.
Moreover we think the current approach to the Environmental Impact Assessment of weighing benefits and dis-benefits does not face up adequately to the effect on the flood plain as a whole. Assessing significant damage to areas most highly designated as important in planning terms and to species also considered the most significant ignores the fact that conservation and development require a much wider examination of the relationship between wild areas and the interrelationship of all species. The State of Nature Report 2016 recognises the loss of diversity and dangers to many species in UK. Hogacre Common may have no particular explicit planning status except being in the floodplain and Green Belt. However those who have spent time there have come across adders, seen a golden oriole, and enjoyed the variety of butterflies and moths, and varied raptors circling overhead because of the large mouse and vole populations. These experiences have not been recorded by authenticated expert just nature lovers, gardeners and dog walkers who enjoy it so much there. We consider that the planning and environmental assessment needs to be weighted in such a way as to reflect that nature diversity cannot be fostered by just protecting what appears most immediately significant – areas like Hogacre Common are vital to the fostering of diversity and require special consideration too.
Planning Statement, Environmental Action Plan and Landscape and Habitats Management Plan
We have mentioned above that we consider the Environmental Action Plan inadequate as it fails to address in any helpful way the problems of land ownership, responsibility, management, access to professional expertise and funding posed by the creation of the two stage channel. We were informed by the Environment Agency that bringing about the improvements would be “a challenge”. We maintain that to obtain planning permission it needs to be far more certain of success – a project that can be addressed diligently and competently – not just a challenge.
We are of the opinion that at present with the inclusion of the two stage channel the benefits of the scheme do not sufficiently outweigh the dis-benefits and as present put forward and therefore planning permission is not merited at this stage towards what should be an effective naturally sustainable flood alleviation scheme. Although flooding needs to be addressed thoroughly and successfully it requires much more of a whole river catchment system approach together with a programme of making all vulnerable buildings much more flood resilient.
We have read in the Planning Statement (sections 3.3 to 3.5) concerning the proposals for a Landscape and Habitats Management Plan its establishment, maintenance, administration and financing. We are very concerned about the implications of this in being in any way able to secure any guaranteed mitigation for the detrimental effects of the proposal. As far as we understand it the Landscape and Habitats Management plan details the 5 year management and establishment of the landscape and habitats associated with the scheme. It provides details for the following 5-10 years and principals for the longer term management. The Environment Agency are not clear at this stage about how this will be managed or financed, other than it will be as sustainable as possible requiring little attention. They state that Oxfordshire County Council have requested a 25 year Landscape Management Plan for the development and restoration sites (but presumable not adjacent land). They understand there is a need to demonstrate restoration of the land is secured beyond the initial 5 year period.
The Environment Agency state are therefore they are happy for a more detailed Landscape and Habitat Plan to be required by condition.
We question the planning practicality and legality of this approach to secure more detailed longer term management plans that conform to the six tests of the National Planning Framework especially in terms of such conditions being enforceable, precise and reasonable in all respects. We note in Government Advice that Grampian or other negative conditions can be used to secure to require an applicant to enter into a planning agreement, but the six tests are still operative so this is likely to be inappropriate. Government Advice however does note that in exceptional circumstances a negatively worded condition requiring a planning obligation or other agreement to be entered into before certain development can commence may be appropriate in the case of more complex and strategically important development, where there can only is a risk that the delivery of the development would otherwise also be at serious risk. What the form of the agreement, and with whom, is uncertain in the planning statement since the Environment Agency can only state that they are discussing the future maintenance of the scheme with partners, stakeholders and landowners (land not yet under their control, but is there going to compulsory purchase of any of this land and of how much?). They say this will provide a robust plan for future maintenance. They are to this end considering the establishment of A Charitable Incorporated Organisation. They feel able also somewhat ambitiously to state they are committed (how)? to securing maintenance for the lifetime of the development (100 years).
Because this approach seems to be the one the Environment Agency are still working on and there is not a great deal of definite information and is of some very legal uncertainty, we as directors are researching this more and consider of what further legal advice and information about the intended approach we can obtain. If we undertake this we will send a further examination of this issue in an appendix which hopefully will reach the County Council before this application is considered in September, together with any other comments we may have on the full 250 documents which need some more time to digest.
If proposals by the Environment Agency for implementation are still in progress and may be brought forward in more detail before the application is dealt with, we believe these should be made public for consultation before the application is determined. We request this happens.
Directors of Hogacre Common C.I.C
Judy Chipchase, Hugo Crombie, Ben Haydon, Deborah Glass Woodin, Alan Poulter, Steve Lawrence, Helen Morley
12/6/18