Following heavy rain over the last few days, West Adderbury Residents Association is very concerned to see that – as of 24 December 2020 – the drainage (attenuation) basin installed by the Parish Council on the Milton Road land is overflowing and flooding adjacent land.
As previously reported, Cherwell District Council have confirmed that the basin installed by the Parish Council to drain the new football pitches has only 15% of the capacity of the basin approved by CDC drainage engineers.
Back in October, David Peckford, Assistant Director of Planning and Development at CDC, wrote to the Parish Council to ask once again when the Council intended to install the approved basin. As far as we are aware, the Parish Council has not responded.
Our worst fears have now been realised, and the basin installed by the Parish Council is overflowing onto the land to the east i.e. towards Adderbury cemetery and the field drain which ultimately discharges into the Sor Brook.
Prior to the installation of the drainage system, rain falling onto the Milton Road land was in part soaked up by vegetation and in part absorbed by the soil right across the field. Now that a network of drains has been installed, rain falling across the site is channelled quickly to the single drainage basin in the top corner of the field.
If the full-sized, approved basin had been installed as it should have been, then the water draining from the two pitches would have been “captured” and held within the basin until it gradually drained away. Instead, because the basin is too small it is unable to hold the water, and rainfall from an area the size of two adult football pitches is being channelled directly into the ditch to the north.
This ditch, and the field drain into which it runs, was never designed to take this volume of water.
The ditch at the back of the Milton Road land, which is just a few inches away from the drainage basin, runs alongside Adderbury Cemetery and into a field drain. This drain runs under Horn Hill and Round Close Roads, under the Lucy Plackett playing field and discharges into the Sor Brook.
The ditch alongside the cemetery, which was previously dry, is now very full as shown below. The ditch flows into the field drain where you see the grating.
All of the water you see in these videos is currently draining into the Sor Brook at the edge of the Lucy Plackett Playing Field. While clearly the majority of the current flooding of the Lucy Plackett is caused by the Sor Brook itself, it cannot possibly help the situation to have additional volumes of water flowing into the Sor Brook from the Parish Council’s football pitches.
WARA have also been in touch with the Parish Council to ask when they intend to install the approved drainage basin. Unfortunately, it appears that the PC’s intention is to wait until the entire project, including the building, is finished – and this could be many years away.