Darwin Groups Retrospective Application For a 'Wildlife' Pond North of Us in Marshland
In 2010 Darwin Group, then called Built-Off Site, ripped all of the trees out of the area north of us and dug out around one foot of soil to form a pond.
A planning application was put in retrospectively for a wildlife pond.
Doesn't it sound lovely? But of course this wasn't what the pond actually was. This is lined with broken tarmac, brick rubble, planings all dug out when they put in the foundations for their 900sq.m. assembly building.
This is pipework installed in the pond.
This is a trench joining the main drainage system to the pond.
Apart from deceiving the Planning Department about the purpose of the pond Darwin Group then altered their plan to falsely claim the ditch separated our land to the south from this pond i.e. any water from the pond would drain into this ditch and not onto our land.
This is the original plan submitted. I've highlighted in red where this ditch, which is a land drain draining our land, goes, which is north to south past the pond area. Note the text points to the ditch.
This is the revised plan. The text now points to the lane, not the ditch. As you can see from my highlighting this shows the ditch as separating our land from the pond. It is of course untrue.
Because my pdf file is no longer available on the planning register I've attached here the first page notifying the Council of the deception being used.
Bizarrely Darwin Group countered this with the following.
In June the wildlife pond application disappeared to be replaced by an attenuation pond in marshland with a connecting soakaway which would have been below the water table i.e. couldn't possibly have worked. So with no functioning soakaway the pond would have overflowed onto our land.
Documents are here but all of my most important pdfs have been removed. https://pa.shropshire.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=L8OVWDTD07200
The pond was only dug out by around 1 foot but notice the obvious - the low side directly abutting the lane. The other side of the lane is our land drain and our field where our septic tank soakaway is.
Bear in mind Darwin Group in their Design and Access Statement describe the ground as 'previously disused marshy ground'. So it has high water table or it wouldn't be marshy, and it certainly can't absorb water from elsewhere if rainwater won't even drain away.
Nevertheless JNM say soakaway tests showed this marsh land was absorbing the water from the site without flooding ourselves. As the Council's drainage engineer said, maybe the soakaway tests did show this - in summer, but what about winter. He requested more information from JNM, which exposed how little they knew about the site or area in general.
In answer to his questions we received the following information:-
- 'We have no information of ground water level as a ground investigation has not been made for the site'.
- 'We do not have existing drainage plans but have been assumed (sic) that our design does not clash with the existing site drainage'.
- On the location of septic tanks etc: 'Built-Off Site to provide existing information'.
So they didn't even have the basic information required to assess the impacts of this SUDs scheme
on our property but were promoting it anyway.
JNM continued to assert their scheme would work fine, until an engineer from Mouchels was brought in. We then had an admittance that the pond was indeed filled with 'mainly ground water and not surface water runoff'. JNM also admitted that in an extreme storm our land but not our house would be 'inundated'.
So after the intervention of the Council's Drainage Engineer and Mouchel's excellent drainage expert, JNM conceded that the pond could not be the main means of drainage, and the soakaway connected to take excess water would need to be connected to the original drainage ditch.
Darwin Group declined to connect to this system, hardly surprising as they don't want to drain to the south west, they want to drain our way.
What they then did is AGAIN assert that we had blocked their drainage by smashing the pipe on our land and they requested the Council delay a decision on the application whilst they took legal action against us. So we again had this petty, untrue allegation from this company. Needless to say no legal action occurred and I involved the Ombudsman at this point.
The Council did not however refuse the planning application. Instead Darwin Group were invited to withdraw it.
Now we again have an attempt to drain water into a 'soakaway' - in the exact same spot. The drainage consultant? JNM. So here we go again.
The problem with the current 'soakaway' is that the Council have allowed this company to raise the levels in this area to almost the same level as the existing site, with a massive camber towards the lane and ditch. How did this happen? Well Darwin Group argued in their application for a car park on this land that the land was formerly infill, not marshland, and the Council have disregarded every scrap of evidence to support this.
The Council's conduct regarding the car park application and the ground levels they have allowed, have enabled this company to stick a pipe from their main drain overland exiting in this car park.
Shropshire Council's complete disregard for the truth has endangered the drainage of our land.
Comments