‘Significant risk to life’ remains if homes built on caravan park

The Environment Agency has heavily criticised the latest plans for 166 new homes to be built on the site of a caravan park.

The Bristol City Council-owned housing company behind the plans, Goram Homes, submitted revised proposals to mitigate the flood risk on the land between the New Cut and the Floating Harbour.

But the Environment Agency says that “significant risk to life” remains in the latest plans for Baltic Wharf.

More than 160 new homes could be built at Baltic Wharf on Spike Island – image: Goram Homes

In a letter to the council’s city development office, Environment Agency planning specialist Mark Willitts said that the organisation “remain(s) concerned based on our extensive experience managing major flood events that design flood depths of the magnitude posed at this site pose a significant risk to life and the mitigation measures proposed are inadequate”.

Willitts wrote: “In summary the new information submitted, rather than seek to revisit and/or adjust the scheme layout to appropriately mitigate flood risk as we have previously suggested, aims to further justify the approach taken.

“In part placing reliance on strategic flood defence infrastructure, which does not yet have any reasonable certainty of delivery.

“This approach is contrary to Bristol City Council’s published Planning Position Statement relating to development in areas of flood risk.

“We maintain our flood risk objection to this application, as submitted, because it fails to demonstrate that the site will be safe from flooding for its lifetime. We recommend that planning permission is refused on this basis.”

The Environment Agency’s flood map – credit: Environment Agency

One of the reasons given for recommending the plans for refusal is that the Baltic Wharf site lies within land defined by the planning practice guidance as having a high probability of flooding.

The Environment Agency says that the flood risk assessment for the site “fails to demonstrate that the development is ‘safe’ for its lifetime” – which is 100 years for residential-led development.

The agency says it is “not acceptable” that existing ground levels to are being lowered to create a new lower ground floor area that will be a “significantly increasing hazard posed to future occupants”.

The entrance to the Baltic Wharf caravan site on Cumberland Road – photo: Martin Booth

On the Goram Homes website, they say that their partnership with Essex-based construction company Hill will see 40 per cent of the 150 new homes as affordable housing, with 76 per cent of these being available for social rent.

“Our Baltic Wharf development… will offer new affordable homes in a prestigious location.

“With it’s (sic) wide open views across Bristol’s skyline, this development is made up of one, two and three bed flats and offers the rare opportunity to live in the city centre.

“The central landscape area will be a mix of public and private space helping to create a new neighbourhood and destination.

“The inclusion of commercial space will provide a new focal point to the western end of the floating harbour.”

An illustrative masterplan of the proposed Baltic Wharf development – image: Goram Homes

The updated flood risk assessment for the site written for Goram Homes and Hill by Almondsbury-based environmental consultants Hydrock says that the planning application submitted for the Baltic Wharf site “is concluded to meet the flood risk objectives of the NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework) and NPPG (National Planning Policy Guidance)”.

The report’s conclusion says that development “is suitable in the location proposed, will be adequately flood resistant and resilient, remains safe for occupants in the ‘design’ flood risk event for the lifetime of the proposed development, (and) will not increase flood risk elsewhere through the loss of floodplain storage”.

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read next:

• Goram Homes bosses defend business plan amid transparency concerns
• New housing could be built on historic quay
• Moving caravan park close to river would be ‘putting lives at risk’
• New Bristol developments accused of ‘greenwashing’

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