Chelmsflood - Producing a flood record for Chelmsford Essex

Hello,

For those of you who don't know me I am Mike Parker. I am a resident of Great Baddow, and former Parish Councillor. For the past few years I have been extensively involved in fighting planning applications to develop areas in and around our floodplain, known locally as "The Meads".

Several years ago I started a petition to protect the area which got over 3.5k signatures:

https://www.change.org/p/save-sandford-mill-the-last-haven-of-countryside-for-eastern-chelmsford

This quickly evolved into an active Facebook community:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/savesandfordmill

We recently defeated the proposed Stonebond development by the Fox and Raven. Planners claimed that the southern part of this site floods once every 30 years at most, whereas we provided photographs showing it flooded 3 times in 5 years. If flooded again after we submitted our comments. The Planners still ignored us, but fortunately the brave Councillors did not and the plan was rejected.

The problem is the Environment Agency flood model is litterally "La La Land". This is a simple model produced for the entire country using hydrometric data, and has not been confirmed in all locations with photographs and local knowledge. I am confident the Scientists who produced it would not claim a high level of accuracy in this area, for the reasons stated, yet the Planners take it as Gospel and disregard local knowledge.

To challenge this nonsense, we need a photographic record of EXACLTY where it floods and when. So I'm making one. I have already made a start on it, as you can see, but this is a huge project that will take me months of work.

The record will include:

My ambition is to have a members area where you can log in and upload information, pictures etc. But this will come later, as its not quite as simple as I imagined.

I will also use the site to publish the results of my analysis of the hydrometric and rainfall data.

This record will become an invaluable resource for residents fighting irresponbile applications to develop areas that flood, and to challenge development aspirations in the Local Plan.

So this fundraiser is to support me while I am undertaking this task, pay for website costs, get some flyers made to generate interest and participation and so on.

I will post updates occasionally to let you know of major devleopments on the site:

www.chelmsflood.co.uk

Thanks for your support.

Mike