Sound familiar, this time it’s about flood risk protection, this is a fairly complex issue and part of it relates to a freedom of information act request that I have in the pipeline, part of it is to do with the history of local flooding, something that means that even if you don’t believe in global warming or rising sea levels, you still need to sit up and think about this one.Both Ramsgate and Margate have a very long history of flooding and storm damage caused by a combination of an exceptionally high tide and storm, fortunately for Ramsgate there is very little on the western undercliff to get damaged and Ramsgate Harbour protects the main developed part of the town that is low lying.
All this really leaves is Ramsgate’s eastern undercliff, the important part being from the Royal Victoria Pavilion to the car park that used to be the Marina Swimming Pool.
This area has a long history of flooding and storm damage – it’s designated “High Risk” by the Environment Agency - and if the sea level does rise the problems there can only get worse when we have a high tide combined with a storm.
During my discussions with various council officers about this area, the Royal Sands or Pleasurama development in particular, I was told by them that the council was due to carry out a “Strategic Flood Risk Assessment” SFRA on the various vulnerable parts of the Isle of Thanet.
The council have just announced that they have spent £98,000 on doing one for Margate, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2010/03/margate-flood-protection-plans-approved.html but nothing seems to have been done for the high risk area of Ramsgate.My freedom of information act requests about these matters still rumble on with very little in the way of information from the council, click on the link for the email I sent them yesterday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/foi/id18.htm I have uses the officers Christian names instead of nicknames based on their weekly salary this time as the nicknames seemed to irritate our chief executive and it’s information I want from him, not to get his back up.
The problem for Ramsgate in all of this is that the area of the town that most needs regeneration is the eastern undercliff and without properly dealing with the flood risk any regeneration there could well be money wasted.
The pictures are of storm damage to Ramsgate’s eastern harbour wall.
