Environmental Agency update report

Apologies I’ve gone quiet this month. Things have been moving unexpectedly on Yelvertoft and I wanted to get everything in order to give a proper update when we knew what our plan was.

As you may be aware the EA process for new flood risk schemes involves producing a number of reports. This generally starts with an Initial Assessment before moving through the three business cases, Strategic, Outline and finally a Full Business case. As we move through the stages we gather more data, do more investigations and narrow our options down until an approved Full Business case which has a single option which we then, assuming we get approval construct.

After reviewing the information we already hold and the options we, along with the community have already we’re not going to produce an initial assessment report. Instead, we’re going to focus on getting the data and flood model to a place where we’re ready to move on to the next stage. We took this decision due to the amount of information we already have on Yelvertoft from previous studies and we were concerned that if we produced a full initial assessment report we would end up a couple of months down the line with a report that re-iterates things everything involved already knew.

With this approach we are further along the process and closer to delivering however it does mean that it will be a longer time until a written report is produced and able to be shared. Whereas before I was expecting to have something to share in the summer the autumn is now looking more likely. I can still share our progress through monthly updates and at any meetings.

In terms of meetings and how those take place. My personal preference is in person. It my be my personal bias but I find those can be more productive and getting people into Yelvertoft can help sharpen focus on the issues. That being said I recognise this can make it harder to get a date that everyone who is needed to attend. Therefore what I would suggest is that the first meeting is virtual, once we have everyone we need at that virtual meeting we spend 10 minuets at the end finding a date and time that everyone can attend an in person meeting in Yelvertoft.

If this approach sounds okay to the parish council then I will get about organising it, probably through a doodle poll and we can go from there.

May 2023