Flood Risk Management

Wickford suffered its second serious flood on September 5th 1958 following a storm which delivered over 8 cm rain in 90 minutes! The photo below shows Halls corner, and 16 people spent the night on the upper deck of the double decker bus in the centre of the picture. The course of the river Crouch was altered in 1960 to solve the flooding problem, and the message is that we should mess around with this new channel at our peril!

Halls corner, September 1958	From the Evening Echo, December 2005

The picture on the right was produced for Bradgate Developments to help them sell the 173 flats in 'Riverside Place', Lower Southend Road, and appeared in a number of local papers. It illustrates how the 'Riverside Living' area could be improved by raising the water level. Many Wickford residents regard this as at best misleading, and at worst an irresponsible action by the developer, and see it as an attempt to win approval for the Master Plan.

This flood map is from the Environment Agency's website, July 2007, and the light blue area shows a 'moderate' risk of flooding. We have added the coloured areas showing proposed developments. current APPROVED planning applications the area covered by the Wickford Master Plan.

Thank goodness for the Environment Agency, who would not permit any changes to the river course without a thorough investigation of the potential flooding risks, and indeed have objected on these grounds to two recent development applications, 3-31 Runwell Road and 17-25 London Road, the latter claimed to be in Flood Zone 3 - high risk, but despite this, all are now approved!

We must be wary about accepting pie-in-the-sky illustrations from developers in which they try to persuade us to accept their proposals.

More information about the flooding risks in Wickford can be found here: