On Monday, January 20, Essex County Council started to cut down a copse within the open space at Brickhouse Farm, Maldon, to make way for its surface water detention basin.

ECC granted itself planning permission for the project in April 2019 subject to a number of conditions, including the submission of a Construction Management Plan (CMP) which was required to include a “commitment to no handling or movement of soils unless they are in a dry and friable condition”.

The CMP submitted in November failed to contain the commitment and I informed ECC planners of this in early December.

Last weekend on visiting ECC’s planning website I saw planners had approved a CMP on January 17. Mysteriously the submission seemed to be the only one on the ECC planning website where the link to view relevant documentation produced an error message.

It was only after the tree felling started that access to the documentation was restored and I found a revised CMP, including the required commitment, had been submitted on January 15. I wonder how ECC managed to have a tree felling contractor lined up to start work the next working day and only three working days after the revised CMP had been submitted.

Throughout the development of the project, ECC has treated the community affected by the project with contempt. ECC’s Local Flood Risk Management Strategy stated the lead risk management authority [in this case ECC itself] should create an engagement plan to ensure affected communities are engaged with.

The document went on to say decisions must be informed by proper engagement with the affected residents. ECC manifestly failed to follow these requirements.

It took a Standard report of a council meeting in November 2016 to alert residents to ECC’s initial proposals. The single, poorly organised “public engagement” event in February 2019 was held after the published closing date for representations on the application.

I now turn to the modelling and economic analysis used by ECC. The most severe rainfall event in recent times occurred on August 24, 2013. According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology this was approximately a 1 in 75 return period event. ECC’s 2018 feasibility report suggested such an event would cause flooding to 889 residential and 132 non-residential properties.

In response to an Environmental Information Regulations request, ECC stated it did not formally collect data on real flood events and had only been made aware of one flooded property on Spital Road during the August 2013 event [which would not in any case benefit from the project]. It is astonishing ECC failed to take the opportunity to carry out a reality check by comparing the results of its analysis with a real event.

Peter Wynn

Wordsworth Avenue, Maldon