Agenda item

Question from Councillor Stuart Wilson to Councillor Peter Strachan, Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration

“The Q2 Capital Budget Adjustments and Reprofiling report submitted to this Cabinet contains references in Appendix 1 to a re-profiling of £345,000 for environment-led opportunities and, in particular, ‘Spade Oak Lake and Little Marlow Visitor Facility business plans under development as original plans did not produce a net nil cost to the Council. Other options are being considered.’

Cabinet approved a programme of action to evaluate Little Marlow Lakes Country park in two phases last year, starting with a cross-function Officer group tasked with developing a commercial plan for the Council-owned land at Spade Oak Quarry. There has been no indication from this Officer group that this work has been substantially on progressed, beyond a workstream on the creation of a Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace as mitigation for the impact of development in Bourne End on Burnham Beeches Special Area of Conservation.

What work has been completed to date that would enable this report to conclude that the original plans did not produce a net nil cost to the Council, including the restoration works required under planning condition, what assumptions are now being  made for the £345,000 going forward including the timings of the delivery of a viable plan to Cabinet, and when will this be shared with all local Members with a strong vested interest in this proposal?”

Question from Councillor Robin Stuchbury to Councillor Steven Broadbent, Cabinet Member for Transport

In Buckingham and North Buckinghamshire it is evident that there are drainage issues with drains both being blocked and not functioning to their full capacity. As an example poor drainage has had a negative impact on property and in two instances within Buckingham children are being impacted greatly by standing water on the road when walking to school. What is the total resource within the local authority for dealing with this situation by way of vehicles and manpower and what plans do you have for budgeting & planning long-term to address these matters to reassure our residents, particularly with increasing storms. 

Question from Councillor Stuart Wilson to Councillor Peter Strachan, Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration

The Q2 Capital Budget Adjustments and Reprofiling report submitted to this Cabinet contains references in Appendix 1 to a re-profiling of £345,000 for environment-led opportunities and, in particular, ‘Spade Oak Lake and Little Marlow Visitor Facility business plans under development as original plans did not produce a net nil cost to the Council. Other options are being considered.’ 

Cabinet approved a programme of action to evaluate Little Marlow Lakes Country park in two phases last year, starting with a cross-function Officer group tasked with developing a commercial plan for the Council-owned land at Spade Oak Quarry. There has been no indication from this Officer group that this work has been substantially on progressed, beyond a workstream on the creation of a Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace as mitigation for the impact of development in Bourne End on Burnham Beeches Special Area of Conservation.

What work has been completed to date that would enable this report to conclude that the original plans did not produce a net nil cost to the Council, including the restoration works required under planning condition, what assumptions are now being  made for the £345,000 going forward including the timings of the delivery of a viable plan to Cabinet, and when will this be shared with all local Members with a strong vested interest in this proposal?”

RESPONSE from Councillor Strachan

As context, the £345,000 is existing capital budget which could be used towards funding the development and restoration works of the Council-owned land at Spade Oak Lake (the initial phase of delivery of the Little Marlow Lakes Country Park).

In line with Cabinet’s decision to develop a scheme for this site which as a minimum would be a Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace (SANG) compliant facility, and a business plan which ensures the facility is delivered as a cost neutral enterprise, officers have been focused upon the necessary steps towards SANG compliance, to attract SANG contributions to fund improvements (these would form part of the business plan for delivering the facility).

The SANG work requires a number of stages including visitor surveys to determine capacity at the site, approvals from Natural England, and development of management plans; this work has been progressing well with surveys undertaken over recent months and continuing discussions with Natural England, but will require time to conclude. Hence the reprofiling of the £345,000 capital budget into next financial year and the comments regarding net nil cost/other options, since the restoration works alone would use up this £345,000 budget.

In tandem, officers have also continued to liaise with partners to try and find a way to get Thames Water’s £0.4m grant to the Community Partnership implemented for habitat and visitor improvements on the site.

The business plans for the site will continue to be progressed and will be the subject of a paper to Cabinet in 2024/25.

Question from Councillor Robin Stuchbury to Councillor Steven Broadbent, Cabinet Member for Transport

In Buckingham and North Buckinghamshire it is evident that there are drainage issues with drains both being blocked and not functioning to their full capacity. As an example poor drainage has had a negative impact on property and in two instances within Buckingham children are being impacted greatly by standing water on the road when walking to school. What is the total resource within the local authority for dealing with this situation by way of vehicles and manpower and what plans do you have for budgeting & planning long-term to address these matters to reassure our residents, particularly with increasing storms?

RESPONSE from Councillor Broadbent

Buckinghamshire Highways are responsible for the following aspects of highways drainage and flooding:

·       Maintaining highways drainage systems across Buckinghamshire, including gullies, catchpits, soakaways and highways drainage ditches.

·       Developing new capital schemes to alleviate highways related flooding.

·       Road closures and flood warning signs as part of emergency response to flooding.

·       Maintaining supplies of sandbags at each depot and distributing where appropriate and resources allow, to mitigate highway and property flooding. The following supplies of sandbags are maintained:

o   500 full sand bags (rot proof) in each depot

o   1000 sand bags (rot proof) empty in each depot

These are primarily for Highways purposes, but if the service has capacity, it will distribute sandbags to properties at risk of flooding at the request of the Emergency Operations Centre or appropriate Duty Officer.

·       Providing information to riparian land owners adjacent to the highway about their responsibilities and enforcement where appropriate.

The maintenance of highways drainage assets is carried out by Buckinghamshire Highways through our Term Maintenance Contractor.  The Council has committed to ensuring cyclical maintenance of all the 85,000 gullies which is a significant investment and commitment.   Officers set out a specific work programme annually, with a reactive maintenance response as necessary during the year. The Term Maintenance Contractor is then responsible for ensuring sufficient resource is available to deliver this work.

Through its Medium, Term Financial Planning (MTFP) process, the Council has allocated the following budgets for highways drainage maintenance in 2023/24:

·       £1.367M for Cyclical Gully Maintenance, which includes maintaining all 85,000 of the Council’s gullies.

·       £1.022M for drainage repairs. These are identified from inspections during the gully maintenance programme as well as following reports from Members and the public.

·       £0.25M for reactive gully cleansing. For example, during very wet weather or where a gully is reported as blocked outside of the cyclical programme.

Currently there is a dedicated crew and gully machine operating out of each of the three main depots, with two additional ‘supersucker’ gully machines working across the County. This is supplemented by supply chain partners operatives and equipment as and when required to fulfil the needs of the service.  Additionally, there is an out of hours emergency service with crews trained and resourced to deal with a range of highways emergencies, including flooding.

There is also a specific “Severe Weather” reserve maintained of around £1.5M. This is to mitigate any additional and unplanned costs associated with storm events etc, beyond what is anticipated for a normal year which could include flooding, fallen trees and long lasting snow or ice as well as repairs to the highway such as following last year’s severe winter.  It is recognised that severe events are becoming more common place, more damaging and not confined to the winter season and the revised recurrence of severe events is taken into consideration in line with Government formal guidance on Flood Risk Assessments.

In addition, the Council has allocated £2M for capital drainage works. This includes identifying and prioritising new drainage schemes as well as replacing obsolete or broken drainage assets.  Again, there is not a specific dedicated resource allocated to this but work is allocated to designers, engineers and other specialist through our Buckinghamshire Highways Alliance partners as required.

The Strategic Flood Management Team is responsible for identifying the Council’s flood management strategy and the team work closely with the Highways team to identify priorities to mitigate property flooding where there is a highways element.  It should be borne in mind though, that it is principally the responsibility of the homeowner to protect their property from flooding unless this is directly caused by the failure of a highway system.  Where the Flood Management Team identifies a particularly need for a highway scheme, this would be dealt with by a bid through the MTFP process.

Like most Highways Authorities, our historic highways drainage systems were not designed to accommodate the increasing intensity and frequency of severe rainfall events we now regularly see. For example, it is not uncommon for rainfall intensity to exceed the capacity of our soakaways and residents may well see standing water in places where there hasn’t been previously, until the drainage system has had time for the water level to subside.   This is, of course, a national issue and something that is being taken into account in emerging design standards for new highway drainage systems, though even new systems may not be able to deal with every extreme event.  It is also not feasible or affordable to upgrade existing highways drainage systems wholesale. Where a specific problem is identified, and prioritised as needing action we will investigate, assess against other proposed schemes and bid for additional funding through the MTFP process as required.