What is the Flood Forum?
Burpham is relatively low-lying and built close to the River Wey. It includes a natural flood plain as well as small rivers crossing overground and underground. This means that from time to time we get flooding which needs to be well-managed. Clay Lane, for example, is prone to go under a few inches of water after heavy rain, and blocked gullies can cause problems for householders. Sometimes the roads and pavements take time to drain and hamper movement along thoroughfares.
And this isn’t all. Like many rivers, the Wey sometimes carries small but unwelcome quantities of sewage which have been pumped out by the water companies after heavy rain, making is dangerous for wildlife and river sports. Whilst we look to the water companies and the government to keep these dangers in check, we have had the benefit of a Flood Forum of companies and organisations, and chaired by the local MP to be answerable to Burpham Residents. We are awaiting a decision by our new MP about how this will be handled in future.
Finally, there is a plan afoot for flood defences to be built in the centre of Guildford. The BCA is involved in feeding back our concerns that the bankside town defences do not send fast funnelled water speeding towards us and thus pass on the destructive power of floodwater in our direction. We are also interested in what can be done to slow down floodwater before they reach Guildford.
The Flood Forum has now met, chaired by our MP Zoe Franklin and will in future meet 6 monthly. It covered developments on the River Wey, the challenges of the Merrow Common Stream to adjacent properties, and the developing town flood alleviation scheme.
Subsequently, BCA organised a productive seminar was with members of the Guildford Flood Alleviation Scheme. Interesting information gleaned at this meeting:
– Unsurprisingly, the major risk of flood comes from the River Wey. The alleviation scheme is focused on the very high-risk flood zone in the centre of town, but presenters reassured us that they are mindful of knock-on effects downstream.• The proposed defences are based on the ‘1 on a 100’ chance of a bad flood. A few homes in Burpham are threatened by this, but several homes if it were to be a ‘1 on a 1000’ flood. Presenters emphasised that this would be unprecedented event.
– The good news is that downstream flooding will be mitigated by the lowering of land along the town centre banks to accommodate exceptional flood waters. Regulating an even flow as the floodwater moves downriver (e.g. using weirs) will mitigate erosion of the banks, but is a minor intervention, not a substantive solution.
– The team has rejected the idea of upstream ‘reservoirs’ to capture flood waters because the land available was not big enough to have an appreciable effect.
– They are factoring in the effects of climate change, and modelling how water will behave when the new flood defences are in place.
– They were also reassuring about the effects of nearby housebuilding e.g. Gosden Hill and Weyside Urban Village. We feared that run-off water would increase floods, but they said that planning rules now obliged builders to use highly effective modern methods to allow surface water to filter into the ground and not cascade into a flooded river.
– Being at the lowest point of the sewage system, we urged them to take account of the effects of flooding on the network of sewage pipes to avoid an unpleasant as well as an inconvenient flood.
