Hi All,

               It’s terrible that another flooding has occurred in the Harrow area following a very heavy period of rain over the weekend. From what we hear at this end of the Valley, the response from the Council and Fire Services has not been great.

On this subject I am enclosing a couple of letters in connection with our pursuing Bucks Council to take action regarding the repeated flooding. The first is our letter to the council of 5^th August which was following up again on the February flooding. The second letter is response from the Council dated 5^th September from yet another Community Liaison Officer assuring us that they are confident that the drainage system in place is adequate and with proper maintenance the flooding will not happen again. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on that.

Yesterday Bucks Council held a Select Committee meeting on the response to flooding in Bucks. The DIG, along with other groups were invited to attend. In the event, I put in a paper expressing our views on the difficulties we have experienced over the years with flooding. I have attached this also.

On a slightly brighter note, yesterday there was a follow-up meeting at the Manor on the Restoration of the Hughenden Stream and Sarah Mustapha and I attended this. This workshop looked at prioritising the areas of work on the stream from a feasibility and benefit point of view. From this work it is expected that a draft plan will be produced and made available for public dissemination.

At the same time we were presented to by Andrew Morsley from the Thame Conservation Trust. The TCT has been appointed to survey and recommend Natural Flood Management measures affecting the Valley. This forms the next part of the Chalk Stream Project and looks at the upper reaches of the Hughenden stream and valley, roughly from the pumping station up to the top of Warrendene and then also flooding from beyond that point. It is hoped that in the fullness of time measures will be introduced to better manage surface water finding its way down into the valley.

Some of you affected by the flooding will have already met Andrew, as he stopped in the Harrow area yesterday before the Chalk Stream meeting to see for himself our issues over the flooding and spoke with a few of you. He may well be a familiar figure around Warrendene in the coming months.

Regards

Paulw

• Harrow Area Flooding

We have written to Rosie Tunnard in early August. This letter refuted the Council’s response that the Harrow/Warrendene area is properly maintained but was simply overwhelmed by exceptional rain that day in February.

We have requested a meeting to discuss works we consider necessary to improve the area’s drainage.

• Presentation to Flooding Response Select Committee

The DIG has been invited to present to the Bucks Council Select Committee on Flooding Response. Paulw will present on 23^rd September the result of our experiences with local flooding events and the council’s response to it.

• Thames Water

Overpumping at the Surgery now is largely forgotten; all  equipment is removed and a cleanup has been done. The field below the pumping station still looks a mess.

We are still pushing Thames Water for a solution to the Valley’s sewage network issues. Some hope that!

• Chiltern Society & the Hughenden Stream

Paulw and Sarah Mustapha attended the Chalk Stream Project workshop on 15^th July on the subject of the Hughenden Stream Restoration Plan. This was held at Hughenden Manor. It involves re-working the Hughenden Stream from down in High Wycombe up as far as the pumping station. It is being driven by the Chiltern Society and Environment Agency and is fully funded, so will be a significant project.

On 23^rd September there is a follow up workshop when a proposed list of alterations along the stream length will be agreed. At a future point a document containing proposed restoration options will be produced for public dissemination.

At some point the upper reaches of our stream (Pumping station to Warrendene Crossroads) will be surveyed also.

It is also understood that the Chalk Stream Project has been invited to work with Bucks Council on Natural Flood Management in Hughenden Valley.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

1^st September

Hi All,

               Please find enclosed a short update on DIG activities.

• Harrow Area Flooding

We have not yet followed up with our reply to Bucks Council regarding the Harrow area floods. We need to do some more checks before writing to the Council and suggesting a plan for drainage improvement in the whole Warrendene and Harrow area.

• Thames Water

Pumping out at the Surgery has continued through June, although TW have reduced the revs on the overpumping equipment because of lowered sewer levels. A casual inspection at the month end suggests that the sewer levels are now very low and we expect the overpumping operation will likely stop soon.

The tankering from Boss Lane has now stopped and TW are looking to repair verges etc.

• Chiltern Society & the Hughenden Stream

Paul met with James Donald of Revive the Wye group 17^th June for Paul to be able to provide an introduction to the DIG and the upper reaches of the Hughenden Stream (from the park up to the top of Warrendene Rd). Paul will organise a meet up with James Donald late July to provide a walk of the upper reaches.

Since the meeting with James Donald, the DIG has received an invitation to attend a Chalkstream Project workshop on 15^th July on the subject of the Hughenden Stream Restoration Plan.

I attended a meeting with the Climate Group who have shown interest in this workshop and up to 4 of us will attend the workshop.

Rgds

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

Hi All,

               Just sharing a response from Maisie Banks regarding the overpumping units. We had felt that the pumps should be retained for a while longer because of the recent heavy rain, but obviously TW don’t think it necessary.

Rgds

Paul

From: Maisie Banks <Maisie.Banks@thameswater.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, July 8, 2024 2:36 PM
To: pbwoodford@icloud.com
Subject: RE: Hughenden Valley Status

Hi Paul,

Hope you are okay,

I have spoken to Lynda who has been monitoring the levels in within our sewer network, as the levels have dropped we turned the over pump off on Thursday 4^th July and since then we can see that the network has been coping with the flows.

Since the over pump has been off we’ve experienced rain fall within the area and have noticed that the ground water levels have also dropped. As we are happy that the network is coping and the additional flows that were getting in have reduced we will be arranging for the over pump to be removed as it’s no longer needed.

Please advise the residents that if they have any issue to call our contact centre on 0800 316 9800 or report an issue online so we can send out an engineer in a timely manner to investigate.

Kind Regards

Hi All,

               Please find enclosed a short update on DIG activities.

• Harrow Area Flooding

We have not yet followed up with our reply to Bucks Council regarding the Harrow area floods. We need to do some more checks before writing to the Council and suggesting a plan for drainage improvement in the whole Warrendene and Harrow area.

• Thames Water

Pumping out at the Surgery has continued through June, although TW have reduced the revs on the overpumping equipment because of lowered sewer levels. A casual inspection at the month end suggests that the sewer levels are now very low and we expect the overpumping operation will likely stop soon.

The tankering from Boss Lane has now stopped and TW are looking to repair verges etc.

• Chiltern Society & the Hughenden Stream

Paul met with James Donald of Revive the Wye group 17^th June for Paul to be able to provide an introduction to the DIG and the upper reaches of the Hughenden Stream (from the park up to the top of Warrendene Rd). Paul will organise a meet up with James Donald late July to provide a walk of the upper reaches.

Since the meeting with James Donald, the DIG has received an invitation to attend a Chalkstream Project workshop on 15^th July on the subject of the Hughenden Stream Restoration Plan.

I attended a meeting with the Climate Group who have shown interest in this workshop and up to 4 of us will attend the workshop.

Rgds

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

• Harrow Area Flooding

We have not yet followed up with our reply to Bucks Council regarding the Harrow area floods. We need to do some more checks before writing to the Council and suggesting a plan for drainage improvement in the whole Warrendene and Harrow area.

• Thames Water

Pumping out at the Surgery has continued through June, although TW have reduced the revs on the overpumping equipment because of lowered sewer levels. A casual inspection at the month end suggests that the sewer levels are now very low and we expect the overpumping operation will likely stop soon.

 The tankering from Boss Lane has  now stopped and TW are looking to repair verges etc.

• Chiltern Society & the Hughenden Stream

Paul met with James Donald of Revive the Wye group 17^th June for Paul to be able to provide an introduction to the DIG and the upper reaches of the Hughenden Stream (from the park up to the top of Warrendene Rd). Paul will organise a meet up with James Donald late July to provide a walk of the upper reaches.

Since the meeting with James Donald, the DIG has received an invitation to attend a Chalkstream Project workshop on 15^th July on the subject of the Hughenden Stream Restoration Plan.

I attended a meeting with the Climate Group who have shown interest in this workshop and up to 4 of us will attend the workshop.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

• Harrow Area Flooding

We are slowly progressing towards assembling a response to Bucks Council regarding the Harrow area flooding. Paulw has conducted a visual check on the area up to the top of Warrendene Rd and Matt Hopkins is part way through checking drainage at Hatches, Bryants Bottom Rd and Hampden Rd.

We hope to be able to write to Bucks Council by the end of June.

• Thames Water

Pumping out at the Surgery has continued through this month and tankering from Boss Ln. The latter is becoming increasingly unpopular with the residents of Boss Ln because of noise and access problems.

The DIG met with a small team from TW this month. Results from meeting:

• We now have a permanent contact for the DIG in Maisie Banks, Custoner Liaison engineer.
• Mark Dolby (Snr engineer) is in the process of putting forward suggestions for hydro-braking for Hughenden Valley. This has to be data modelled for the whole valley and will include the Naphill & HV sewer junction problem. No timescale available on this.
• TW looking at reducing the frequency of overtankering with the weather improvements
• There will be a cleanup done in Boss Ln and the field below the pumping station when tankering /field leakages finished.

• Chiltern Society

Paul meeting with James Donald of Revive the Wye group 17^th June.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

• Harrow Area Flooding

We wrote to Rachael Shimmin the Bucks Council CEO requesting an investigation into the causes of the flooding, and have received two replies from Rosie Tunnard. The first essentially describes the flooding as a well maintained drainage system simply being overwhelmed by sheer volume of rain and detritus swept along the road.

The second carries some notes from the Flood Management Team, who are putting some work into analysing how the problems occurred.

We are currently looking into the contents of these letters and intend to reply soon. However, there are some possible good points in the letters:

• Clearance of gully systems have been ordered
• Looking into possible solutions to better direct road water into the Warrendene ditch
• Hampden Rd ditch is to be cleared (looking very overgrown)

• Thames Water

Despite expectations to the contrary, TW started overpumping by the Surgery this month. This has provided much relief to those neighbours who were experiencing sewage spillages in their gardens.

We are currently organising a daytime meeting with Mark Dolby, a Snr TW engineer to visit and update us on current activities.

The sewer remains full and becomes threatening when we have heavy rain or when the  overpumping unit stops running for any reason.

A look at the Hughenden Borehole graph shows that the groundwater levels are slowly going down, but have a long way to go before the stream stops running.

• Chiltern Society

Paul was invited to a Chiltern Society Friends event, where representatives of the groups that look after the Chiltern chalkstreams gathered. This was a new event to try and bring each of the groups closer and encourage joint production of plans etc.

Paul will pick up with the Revive the Wye group who look after the Wye but also have the Hughenden Stream as part of their remit.

Paul also to identify any persons or group in our valley wanting to take on a role in this.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

               Sewage overpumping unit installed today by the surgery.

Paul

A DIG meeting was held to discuss the flooding events the Valley had been experiencing in February and March. Attendees were essentially DIG members local to lower Valley Rd affected by the sewage issues. The issues discussed included:

Surface water flooding along Warrendene and into the Harrow and gardens close by

Sewage leakage problems experienced in lower Valley Road and Boss Lane affecting up to 20 houses caused by prolonged rainfall

The meeting spent some considerable time talking about individual experiences, action taken to cope with incidents of flooding and help given by local agencies.

Bucks Council

It was noted that only following the Harrow flooding of 17/18^th did maintenance work on road drains start. This is work that had been requested several times via FixMyStreet by the DIG.This work is not complete yet and is viewed as a contributory factor in worsening the results of the flooding at that time.

It was decided that the DIG should write to the Chief Executive of Bucks Council to express our dissatisfaction with the service provided and to request a detailed investigation be undertaken to determine the cause of the flooding and how it might have been prevented.

Thames Water

Since losing access to Darren Trenchard, our main contact at Thames Water, we had been trying to find someone to replace him, without success. We were finally able to get some up to date intelligence on TW via an introduction thanks to Roger Hewitt. Our findings are as follows:

We were informed that TW have changed dramatically since our flooding 10 years ago, principally:

Centralisation of management and operationsChange in approach to planning. As we have seen with the DWMP although this is now a massive operation although there is precious little documentation relating to Little Marlow other than a page with reference to sewer lining, surface water management and investing in the sewage treatment works. They don’t say what they will do at Little Marlow (I guess it will be mostly increasing storage capacity to reduce releases into the Thames). There is absolutely no reference to Hughenden Valley.Equipment and resources are now centrally located in warehouses rather than, say, at the STW. This suggests our dedicated overpumping units are no longer at Marlow and in any event no one at TW probably has any knowledge of units dedicated for our use. I did receive a mail from Simon Cook (next to Chiltern Car Sales) at the weekend who said a Lanes engineer told him ‘all resources are out in use’ when he asked about the overpumping units.

The relationship has fundamentally changed in recent years with the Environment Agency. The legislation has been vastly tightened up making it far more difficult to gain approval on things like overpumping.

The response from TW during this month was agreed as being poor to useless. In effect, any call outs resulted in TW contractors visiting houses and offering sympathy but little else. There had been no help from requests for local pumping out of inspection pits or to install  overpumping units such as was put in place in 2014. However, towards the end of March, frequent tinkering took place at Spring Rising, where there was considerable flooding from an inspection pit.

Actions agreed:

We would remove all references to overpumping from the DIG website as that is something no longer reserved for us

We would write to the CEO of Thames Water to express our dissatisfaction with the recent help given. We will compare it with the much higher level of help given in 2000 and 2014. Also, to request some proper detail on the Drainage Plans for our area plus to provide us with an engineering contact who could visit us and hear our complaints.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG