Minutes:
Nick Harding provided an update on the garden town project. He stated that the work in conjunction with the flood risk assessment was completed in the summer. It looked at the site in terms of performance, against a series of flood scenarios, including breaches in a number of locations and the assessment also included climate change and looked ahead to see if the site was sufficiently resilient. The conclusion of the work was that with relatively few areas subject to land raising, the site was capable of being resilient to the various flood risk tests.
He added that within the current Local Plan, where development has been identified, the scenarios that have been tested showed different areas for development based on which parcels of land showed that they were subject to flooding.
He stated that any development proposal for West Wisbech and the garden town area would have to be subject to sequential testing if it is going to be identified in the Local Plan.
Nick Harding provided an update with regard to connectivity, which is still being worked on. Improvements to the A47 and the Wisbech rail project are quite important in the context of making the Garden Town a more realistic proposition. The bid for the new garden town is still before MHCLG.
David Thomas stated that the word ‘resilience’ when discussing flooding has different meanings in certain contexts and he asked for clarification. Nick Harding explained that his interpretation of resilient ion this case was with regard to the flood work that was carried out, it did not look at individual residential areas, but it looked at scenarios, where flooding was going to occur and at what depth would be appropriate. Containment of flood waters within the kerbs of highways is not considered to be of significant concern to anyone, apart from the highway authority.
John Maxey asked that the flood investigation work that has been carried out will involve the area that is currently within the broad area of growth as well as the new garden town area. He asked whether it will have any implications to the current broad area of growth in terms of delivery of development which developers need to be aware of, especially for those developers who sit on the West Wisbech Broad Concept Group and is the information readily available to the group. Nick Harding added that the new Local Plan is currently being prepared and if people are looking to have the West Wisbech area allocated for a level of development within the plan period, then the parcel of land needs to be identified as something they wish to be seen brought forward. Within the local plan process there needs to be the evidence that bringing forward those parcels of land has certainty around it.
Nick Harding added that with regard to the Garden Town project, he is not expecting that any land will be allocated in the new local plan that forms part of the garden town proposal for delivery within the plan period that is being planned for as a housing requirement in the new local plan.
John Maxey asked whether there is a more up to date flood modelling information available, which could be fed into the broad concept working group. Nick Harding agreed to look into this further.
John Maxey asked Nick Harding to ascertain whether the flood risk report was available.
Nick Harding gave an update into the March Access Study.
He advised the Forum that the research work and forecasting has now been concluded. Solutions to the transport problems have been identified and are now being tested. Once that part of the process has been completed, the transport improvement proposals will undergo a public consultation in spring 2020.