Environment agency not coming clean on flood risk
‘Explanations’ given out late yesterday by the Environment Agency do not stack up in the light of the 2009 ‘flood risk’ report on Ebbsfleet, and its author is claimed no longer to be involved….this despite both his LinkeIn and EA website entries still showing ‘Regional Director Anglia’. In turn, the various government departments involved are playing full-on ‘pass the smelly bomb’ on the issue….and the EA website is about to fall directly under Downing St control.
The Slog can reveal that the author of the 2009 Kent flood management report, Toby Willison (left) – then the Regional Director South at the Environment Agency – was moved from his job to become ‘National Programmes Director’ of the EA six months ago. According to the EA press room last night, this means that Ebbsfleet “doesn’t sit within Toby Willinson’s workstream now, he’s no longer a regional director.” Which is kind of odd, because on Toby’s Linkedin site, and on the EA’s organagram, it still says he’s the regional director for Anglia…where he was moved after South. Hmm.
In addition to this ‘explanation’, I was given another ‘explanation’ about how and why Toby’s 2009 ‘high risk’ report on North Kent flood management at Ebbsfleet was no longer relevant:
‘The Thames Barrier is an integral part of a larger flood defence network in London….The tidal Thames benefits from a very high level of flood protection. There are more than 36 industrial floodgates protecting riverside industry and 380 smaller, moveable defences.’
But this is no answer at all: Willinson wrote of the dangers at Ebbsfleet five years ago. The Thames Barrier was opened 30 years ago next month. I’m assuming that the regional director for Southern Flood protection would most likely have heard of the Thames Barrier: it’s very big, and it protects people from floods. I truly do not believe that 36 floodgates and 380 smaller moveable defences have been built over the last five years: if anyone had tried, George Osborne would’ve swiftly trodden on their fingers.
Just to reiterate, this was Toby Willinson’s 2009 introduction in relation to the Dartford & Ebbsfleet corridor. He expresses his view below that the Thames flood barrier is irrelevant to Ebbsfleet. He wrote:
Specifically in the overview section, he compiled a table on Page 9 that showed there were more houses at risk of flooding in the Ebbsfleet-Dartford axis than anywhere else in North Kent:
This is what he had to say about George Osborne’s new Garden City site:
Note – Dartford Town Centre. Not Ebbsfleet – which was at the time tiny. This is why Toby recommends a very limited future development of properties there:
The increase represents 189 houses over 80 years. The Osborne Plan is for 15,000 houses right now. Further, Willinson specifically recommended that government should:
I spoke last night with a number of residents in the area. None of them were aware of any such action being taken. He went further and specifically gave this order:
Under ‘Civil Emergencies Flooding’ at GBC’s site, there is no mention of such pumping work having been completed. But Gravesham itself issued a report in December 2009 envisaging 600 new domestic units. Not 15,000. Ebbsfleet in particular was singled out for its environment, and the need to protect it. Significant is this extract:
So the wetland habitat was being maintained via artificial pumping. But Toby Willinson said there should be more groundwater pumping for development, not habitat. And Ebbsfleet will lose that natural habitat. And more species will expire. Purely because no Government in the last sixty years has faced the issue of drastic controls on immigration.
In fact, the entire planning of Ebbsfleet has been massively upgraded – and very recently. All the plans and application documents from 2008 -2013 make this blindingly obvious. The project smacks of a scramble to build. And surrounding that is the familiar smoke and mirrors of press briefing. These are the facts:
* Toby Willinson wrote a report about Ebsfleet et al in 2009, from which nobody in their right mind could conceivably have extrapolated that it’d be a great idea to stick 15,000 houses on it.
* The biographical record of Willinson thereafter makes him look like either a chap who works very fast, or a bloke that keeps needing to be moved out of the way.
* Ebbsfleet is to be – as George told us last Sunday – Britain’s first Garden City for a hundred years. Toby Willinson is national programmes director, but ‘this doesn’t sit within Toby Willinson’s workstream now’. So what does Toby do?
* All I asked for yesterday was a quote from Mr Willinson saying that he was cool with the Ebbsfleet development. It was not forthcoming. Instead, I was given this jargonised puffery: ‘“The Environment Agency has worked closely with local authorities and developers for over 10 years to promote sustainable development at Ebbsfleet. We will continue to proactively advise our partners, as part of the planning process, on managing flood risk and improving and protecting the environment”. What I’d like to know now is (1) WHEN did that process switch into being a 15,000 house Garden City and (2) WHOSE idea was it?
* The information I was given by the EA yesterday was no answer to the question at all, which was: WHY, given the Willinson Report of 2009, is the Government going to build MORE houses than recommended on a site with HIGH flood risk and groundwater using a drastically upweighted plan that will DESTROY what the EA and local council themselves admit is an important area for environmental protection?
The answer is twofold. First, because they (and all the other Muppets in Whitehall and Westminster) kicked the can of population control down the road for forty years. And second, because the Conservative Party is paying the construction industry back in kind for its £3.5m contribution to 2010 electoral failure by Our Helmsman, Mr David Cameron.
My conclusion in all this is that Toby Willinson has been moved sideways and asked to shut up. But for the control freaks in Downing Street, that’s nowhere near enough: once those into everything from housebuilding to fracking get started, goodness me they don’t want any tree-hugging fluffies wittering on about the risks. After all, Britain
has its legs akimbo
is open for business. So nothing must get in the way.
And that’s why, my friends, from next month control of the EA’s website will pass from the experts to the politicians and their amateur Sir Humphreys. As noted here by the EA itself, in the bottom corner of a subsidiary webpage:
Well, we’re in business lads! Let’s get flooding!
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You can always tell as a hack, when something inexplicable (beyond arse-covering and greed) is revealed: all the departments concerned play pass the parcel with the issue. EA moved the relevance of making statements away from the main critic of Ebbsfleet development. So then I went to Defra which – although the clue in the name is that the ‘E’ stands for Environment, and its boss Owen Paterson is called Minister for the Environment – flatly denied yesterday that this was any of its business. “That’s Communities and Housing,” said a young press assistant, who in a way confirmed the fact by saying she’d never heard of Ebbsfleet.
Later today – if time allows – I shall be demonstrating from past evidence that in fact this does lie slap bang on Paterson’s patch. Maybe Owen has had enough of confrontations with Tory Big Beasts: he was, after all, the man whose Department issued the data first nailing the Boris-Yeo taxi emissions as complete bollocks.
Like I said yesterday, stay tuned: this saga will run and run.
Last night at The Slog: Is George Osborne fit to hold public office?
Filed under: EBBSFLEET: GARDEN CITY CRITIC MUZZLED AS DOWNING ST MOVES TO CONTROL EA OUTPUT Tagged: EA covering for Osborne, EA to be folded into gov.uk, Ebbsfleet risk evidence mounts, Enivronnment Agency, Garden City fiasco gets worse, Goerge Osborne, Owen Paterson Defra, Toby Willinson