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Flood fear for Front Garden

From the The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, first published Thursday 26th Jul 2007.

Severe flooding in Swindon has given weight to the fight to stop thousands of homes being built on the town's front garden.

The Front Garden Action Group claims the flooding at Wichelstow showed more homes should not be built on the flood plain.

FRAG members, including chairman Terry King, visited parts of the Front Garden on both Friday and Saturday to see for themselves the levels of flooding and the impact it could have on any housing in the area.

Mr King said: "My view of it is I told you so'.

"We have been fighting against the Front Garden since 1997 and ten years on it's 2007 and we have this.

"From the start we were saying this is a bowl of ground, with three brooks, a river and an escarpment with various streams on it - so what do you expect?

"Now our forecast is coming true."

David Evans project director for developers Taylor Wimpey said: "Over the past few days we have had instances of the watercourses overtopping their banks and flooding into the Wichelstowe area. We have not identified any instance of this that is not consistent with our flood modelling.

"The Environment Agency is satisfied that our flood modelling is robust.

"All residential development on Wichelstowe will be outside the predicted flood plain and will be built with ground floors at least 600mm above the predicted worst case flood level. Similarly all distributor roads are designed to be above the flood level."

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