Flooding may have shot up the political agenda but that hasn’t stopped local planning authorities driving through housing developments in areas at severe risk of flooding.

From Cornwall to London, to Cardiff, Leeds and Northumberland, local authorities across England and Wales have been ignoring the Environment Agency’s (EA) protests and waving through developments on flood-prone land.

As Britain endures another weekend of torrential rain and further flooding, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal that last year local councils allowed at least 87 planning developments involving 560 homes to proceed in England and Wales in areas at such high risk of flooding that the EA formally opposed them.

Reported by the Independent on Sunday. You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.