New drainage system costing more than £500,000 approved for Lincolnshire village
A new drainage scheme costing more than half a million pounds has been approved for a Lincolnshire village following years of flooding.
A new drainage scheme costing more than half a million pounds has been approved for a Lincolnshire village following years of flooding.
Councillors at Lincolnshire County Council voted to approve the £578,500 project to improve the drainage system in Mount Lane, Kirkby la Thorpe, near Sleaford, at an Overview and Scrutiny Management Board meeting yesterday (Thursday, August 21).
In the last 10 years, 57 homes in the village have either been flooded or been close to flooding, costing the county council approximately £8,700 per property.
Coun Thomas Catton (Reform UK), executive member for resources, told councillors that there was ‘critical infrastructure’ that needed to be protected from the risk of flooding.
He said: “The scheme has come from the residents who have endured the flooding since 2017.
“This is not just residential homes that have been affected. This is critical infrastructure for the sewage works which needs to be protected.”
The special ‘call-in’ meeting was requested by Conservative councillors Richard Davies, Martin Hill and Charlotte Vernon over concerns that the scheme didn’t represent value for money.
Coun Davies said: “We believe that the scale, costs and details of the scheme warrant further examination.
“This is a massive investment and piece of work which has not been scrutinised. There’s no evidence that this decision has had any kind of pre-decision scrutiny.
“We’ve not really seen that cost-benefit analysis, ranking it with other schemes in other places.
“I think that it’s important before we spend more than half a million pounds that we’re sure the reason for one location vs another have been fully worked through.
“We really need to be clear that this represents good value for money.”
Coun Hill said: “This is not us saying that we do not want it. It’s about the high level of expenditure and the lack of proper decision-making and scrutiny.”
County council leader Sean Matthews (Reform UK) said that the scheme was a ‘preventative measure’ against the risk of future flooding in the village.
He added: “This is a preventative measure. We have gone round and round in circles.
“I’m comfortable with the decision to put that track in is the right one and I think this is the right amount of money to spend on it.”
Coun Cain (Reform UK) said he supported the scheme.
He added: “We’ve all seen the impact of flooding in our patches. How many times have we said that we wished something was done to prevent this?”
Coun Catton told councillors that he was ‘content’ that this was the right decision for the village.
He added: “We were just given the decision to make but before we made that decision, we had emails, we had telephone conversations, we had meetings to do our due diligence behind this scheme which covered all relevant elements which are coming up in these questions to make that decision.
“From our side, we did our due diligence, we made lots of enquiries into the scheme and after that process we were content that we made the right decision to push this decision forward.”
County councillors approved the plans with immediate effect and decided not to send the proposal back to the executive member for highways and transport for further consideration.
Construction of the new drainage system will begin at a later date and is expected to take up to 26 weeks.