Oxford Flood Alliance has a letter in today’s Oxford Mail pointing out that had the flood alleviation scheme been in place none of the chaos we’ve seen over the last 5 days would have happened. Homes and businesses in the city would not have flooded, roads would have been dry, and we wouldn’t have been using up EA and Council staff time and budget deploying barriers, sandbags and pumps.

Even those who objected to aspects of the proposed Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme at the recent public inquiry agree that we need a flood scheme of some sort. There’s even common ground about many aspects of the OFAS design, the engineering work at Redbridge, Kennington and Seacourt, and flood bunds, for example. The sticking point is the two stage channel.

We’ll never get concensus on these issues and choices have to be made by the County planners and DEFRA. That process needs to happen speedily now. OFA wants to see a decision for the scheme to go ahead. Flooding is going to get more frequent and severe. We cannot keep muddling through the way we are currently.