Strategic Flood Risk Assessment - Hambleton District Council

• developers should fund the provision and maintenance of flood defences
that are required because of the development; and
• planning policies and decisions should recognise that the consideration of
flood risk and its management needs to be applied on a whole-catchment
basis and not be restricted to flood plains.
3.10 Reducing the vulnerability of the country to the dangers and damage caused
by unmanaged flood contributes to the achievement of a better quality of life
and the objectives of sustainable development. Local planning authorities
should, therefore, address the problems which flooding can cause by:
• recognising that the susceptibility of land to flooding is a material planning
consideration;
• giving appropriate weight to information on flood-risk and how it might be
affected by climate change in preparing development plans and
considering individual proposals for development;
• consulting the Environment Agency which has the lead role in providing
advice on flood issues at a strategic level and in relation to planning
applications and other relevant organisations;
• applying the ‘precautionary principle’ to decision making so that risk is
avoided where possible and managed elsewhere;
• improving information available to the public about the risks of locating
human activities in areas susceptible to flooding;
• taking into account the responsibility of owners for safeguarding their own
property as far as is reasonably practicable;
• recognising that flood plains 3 and washlands 4 have a natural role as a
form of flood defence as well as providing important wildlife habitats and
adding to landscape value and;
• recognising that engineered flood reduction measures may not always be
the appropriate solution, since they can have economic and
environmental costs and impacts on the natural and built environment,
need maintenance and replacement and cannot eliminate all risk of
flooding
3.11 The guidance set out in PPG25, and in particular the sequential test,
should be applied in determining the allocation of land for future
3 All land adjacent to a watercourse, as defined in the Land Drainage Act 1991, or coast over
which water flows in time of flood or would flood but for the presence of flood defences where
they exist.
4 Area of flood plain where water is stored in time of flood. Such an area may have its
effectiveness enhanced by the provision of structures to control the amount of water stored
and the timing of its release to alleviate peak flood flows downstream.
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