Essex Highways have ignored multiple objection letters from local residents highlighting the flood risk in the immediate area around Boxted bridge and have failed to support their planning application to replace the bridge with a Construction Site Risk Assessment. Highways’ proposed construction site for vehicles and machinery is situated in a swampy field a few meters from where the above photograph is taken.
The Flood Risk Assessment submitted in June 2021 to support the proposed replacement of Boxted Bridge repeatedly states there is a very low flood risk at Boxted Bridge. But Waterman, a specialist environmental planning consultancy, have based their lengthy assessment on the EA's notoriously inaccurate figures and charts for the Stour Valley at this site which state that the bridge is a Flood Zone 3 area with a 1% annual probability for flooding from rivers.
The Flood Zone level around the bridge is in fact the highest in the country, Flood Zone 3B- also called The Functional Floodplain. The government's own flood and risk and coastal change planning guidance warns that the 'identification of functional floodplain should take account of local circumstances and not be defined solely on rigid probability parameters' and adds that the zone also refers to land which is 'designed to flood', e.g. the water meadows either side of the River Stour surrounding the bridge.
Historic annual flood records going back 50 years, compiled with local knowledge, show that January, February, March, April, May, even July and August, October, November and December have all been known to flood, the bridge marooned for an average of 3/4 days at a time, and countless cars written off on the surrounding impassable three approach roads.
The high risk of flooding, coupled with inevitable bridge construction delays, would result in a bridge replacement ending in an embarrassing, protracted, and exorbitant disaster. Why not instead, carry out a feasibility report ASAP to repair and strengthen the existing bridge based on the modest £355k estimates for remedial work detailed in the June 2023 Bridge Inspection Report?
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