Thursday 3 January 2013

Funding Sought For Tenbury Flood Defence

Harriett Baldwin MP has asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to find flood defence funding for Tenbury Wells. She is hoping that Tenbury will receive about £5m from £120m funding for flood defences announced by the government in November.

Ms Baldwin said: "Upton's schemes have passed some rigorous testing over the last few weeks and I am told that savings delivered for insurers means that the investment has paid for itself twice over already." "All eyes now turn to Tenbury where we need to find a permanent solution and I have asked the department to look at ways we can find funding for this scheme in 2013"
Church Yard - Tenbury Wells
Hopefully, once the funding agreement is in place, the action plan will be significantly revised from the outline plan published sometime ago. This involved huge lengths of permanant earth bunds.

This is how a Horsham Cllr reacted when a landowner created a bund on his land.
“The bund has to be seen to be believed. It is an outrageous scar on the landscape, both from the road and on the site."
and another said
"“The bunds are incongruous and an unnatural feature, many hundreds of metres in length. The land should be put back to where it was."
Yet, seemingly no one locally has any objection to huge earthworks behind the Church or across the Burgage?  I can understand that people don't want their family graves flooded or their properties, but must the town suffer the addition of these permanent unnatural features?

6 comments:

Ian said...

I'm afraid that I don't understand Ms Baldwin's claim that savings delivered for the insurers as a result of the Upton scheme mean that the investment has paid for itself. Surely the taxpayer funded the scheme not the insurance industry.

I agree about the bunds - they would be permanent and unsightly. Surely there has to be a more imaginative remedy.

More disruption.. said...

Nor I. Neither do i beleive that many at WCC even know which river runs throught Tenbury see URL - surely the clue is in the title....

Will WCC plan the flood defence work to happen after the drainage work (Jan>Apr 2013), after the potential building of Tesco (Apr > Sept 2013) and after the PR works (Sept 2013 > Jan 2014) - So that'll be 2014 messed up for the local retailers as well then - marvellous! 3 years in a row....surely our elected Councillors should be supporting and ensuring the works "will be co-ordinated the works in such a way as to cause the least amount of disruption" (as claimed) to benefit the town and not going at things in an apparent haphazard manner which is keeping people away from Tenbury and killing trade.

Tenbury Hit again and again said...

Despite the following, the shops are still open, so many thanks to the shopkeepers:
2007 = Floods
2008 = Floods
2009 onwards = General Economic Collapse
2011 Council's wildly incorrect guess about duration of forthcoming bridge closure worries many people. Council decides not to repair Teme St drains during 2012 bridge closure.
2012 = Teme Bridge closed for 2 months while it was repainted. Incorrect signage causes serious problems.
early 2013 = Repairs to drains in Teme St, Market St, etc
later in 2013 = public realm work and closure of cattle market car park
2014 = Tesco to open? Parking charges to be introduced on the swimming pool car park?

Parking debacle said...

It may not be an issue for the Burgage....One of the TTC options to increase parking would be to turn the Burgage, or a proportion of it into a Car Park. I would not be a fan of that option. Rearranging the Palmer's pitches is surely a better option. What a shame that if this option is taken up "we" as tax payers will end up paying for it instead of it being included as a Cattle Market S106 condition. The shortage of parking was highlighted on numerous occasions by many people -it is not a surprise - was it short sightedness by the council or something more sinister?

Anonymous said...

What was missed out during the S106 agreement with Tesco's was funding for sports. I have been told that at least 10% of any section 106 agreement should be made available for sports in the town. Sports facilities have be left to rot in the town and something should be done to encourage more younger people to play sports.

@WR15 said...

"Someone" may have told you that, but they would be wrong.