Flooding threat

SIR - I listened with a good deal of interest to Spotlight on Wednesday lunchtime which featured an interview with a local farmer whose family have been farming in the Broadclyst area for several generations. He was expressing great concern that, since building operations have commenced on the new town of Cranbrook, the flooding problems on the land he farms have intensified.

It reminded me that several years ago, when details for this new town were being finalised, I wrote a somewhat light-hearted, though sincere letter to your paper stating that the area could well end up resembling little Venice.

Beware the unobserved passage of time – just a year or so later with, but a few roads constructed and a small number of houses completed, we get a wet period and the locals are already expressing their concerns, and quite rightly so.

Neither the developers or local authority planners will have any of it; “not so” they cry in unison, in the full knowledge that, by the time this carbuncle has been completed and hundreds more acres covered in concrete and tar macadam, the developers will have moved on to desecrate somewhere else, and, if pushed, will fall back on the old adage that they take no responsibility for design, they only built what was decided by others.

As for the planners, they will long since be comfortable in their retirement, complete with inflation-proof pensions, which the very people being adversely affected have contributed to through their council tax etc. . . .a classic case of “I’m in the lifeboat, Jack”.

It goes without saying that this will be no help or consolation whatsoever to those resident whose lives will be forever blighted by the actions of “the few”.

Ralph E Gray

Hawkins Lane, West Hill