2 Eton Close DATCHET Berkshire SL3 9BE

28 April 2007

‘Re £1.4m repair to stop floods’

Yet another serious structural failure to add to the ever extending and apparently never ending list of taxpayer funded repairs to the flawed Jubilee River design and construction that has run into millions of pounds to prop up what is becoming a serious white elephant.

The EA’s totally discredited Flood Risk Manger, Ian Tomes tries desperately to minimise the current problem with misleading and patronising comments which lamely terminate in his claim that the Jubilee River saved 1000 properties in Maidenhead from flooding in 2003.  He fails to record that the EA’s admitted misoperation caused a varying degree of flooding to approximately 740 properties downstream of the Black Potts confluence at Datchet.

A cost conclusion was enacted last year against the EA’s designers and W S Atkins published a closure report in January 2007 stating, ‘All recommendations regarding the structural integrity and capacity of the channel made in the post 2003 event reports are now complete’ and now this!  A 300m length of critical containment at Taplow is seriously compromised, requiring replacement and reinforcement.

All the EA’s vaunted channel capacity claims are clearly exposed as spin and obfuscation and we ask what was the true risk that residents were exposed to this last winter where the maximum capacity of water handled was less than half of the total scheme capacity advised by W S Atkins and yet the channel has failed again.

When parts of this system unexpectedly fail so comprehensively, the question is clearly, “How safe is the rest of it and will other parts fail when the channel carries water near its untested maximum stated capacity which is currently at an already reduced redesign limit?”

The EA have admitted they failed to survey beyond the construction boundary at the 1992 Public Enquiry.  Is this deficiency starting to impact on the future integrity of the Jubilee River in total?

Responsibility for the appalling way this project has been handled has not been forthcoming despite the embarrassing catalogue of extensive repairs since 2003.  Therefore there are now obvious grounds for a call to fully investigate the channel and hold an enquiry into the structural integrity on the basis that a serious risk to residents’ safety has been clearly demonstrated in the face of the public bleating from the EA spokesmen that all is well when blatantly it is not.

There has got to be a call to get this channel sorted out once and for all and provide clear, proven, safety undertakings to the public and authorities.

Ian Thompson

Representing ThamesAwash

Representing CSG South

Member of Thames Flood Forum