DEMOCRACY PRODUCES A FLOOD PLAN NO-ONE LIKES

07 February 2008

When is progress not progress?Answer; when it makes things worse rather than better.

This riddle came into my mind as I stood staring, last Friday, at a large map in the kitchen of a house in Charminster.

The map showed in glorious technicolour the scheme proposed by the Environment Agency for relieving flooding in Charminster.

For those who are not familiar with Charminster, it is a village that has, at its centre, a beautiful old church, a confluence of various streams, and a number of lovely old houses coming down a rather steep hill.

For many years, I have been trying, at the behest of people living in the village, to persuade the Environment Agency to devise a scheme to make it less likely the village will be flooded by the streams.

You might have assumed the early morning inspection of the map was something in the nature of a celebration. Here, at last, was an Environment Agency scheme for doing exactly what we had all been seeking.

Alas, there is a hitch.

The parish council chairman reports the scheme has succeeded in achieving unanimity in the village, something that is rare in any place. Unfortunately, the unanimity resides in the fact there is no-one who approves of the scheme.

There seems, in fact, to be various kinds of objection. Villagers believe the scheme will probably make flooding more likely rather than less, at least in some places; not an auspicious start for a flood alleviation project.

This is not the end of the matter. Villagers are also alarmed at the aesthetic damage the scheme will cause, creating a rather intrusive and unsightly bund in a location of exceptional charm.

As I listened to the various objections to the Environment Agency proposal, I reflected on how extraordinary an achievement it is for a public agency to devise something that is clearly intended to fulfil aspirations but has managed to unite residents in feeling it would be worse than useless.

I do not suppose the cost of producing the drawings and doing the other work associated with the proposal will have been enormous, but a consultancy was nevertheless employed and we will all have contributed a small amount through our taxes in paying for this objet d'art.

It is a little irking that we will now have to spend a certain amount of energy persuading the Environment Agency to abandon the very thing we had expended so much energy persuading them to undertake.

The strange thing is when one inspects the proposal, it transpires that enormous numbers of worthy bodies were duly consulted. The so-called Scoping Consultation Document has been issued to Natural England, English Heritage, West Dorset District Council, Dorset County Council and the Dorset Wildlife Trust. These worthy bodies will, no doubt, now have to expend some time and effort considering their responses to the proposal.

The thought flitted through my mind, as I left the kitchen meeting, that it might have made sense for the Environment Agency to ask their consultants to have a quick word with the locals at an early stage, to see what might be acceptable, before they did all the work.

I quickly banished this ludicrous fantasy from my mind. A quick word with the locals is not, after all, part of a proper bureaucratic process.