There’s a planning application in for a cricket pitch at “Land East Of Land Adjacent Broomhills, Stambridge Road, Stambridge”.
The site is currently used for agriculture, however the plan is to make it into a cricket pitch for Rankin’s Cricket Club.
However there is a snag. The land is in a flood risk area – flood zone 3, in fact, which means the land has a high probability of being flooded. If you apply for planning permission in this flood zone, you need to carry out a flood risk assessment. The applicants apparently haven’t done this, so for that reason alone officers are recommending refusal:
REFUSE
The proposed cricket pitch which is located within flood zone 3, due to the absence of a flood risk assessment, is considered to be contrary to the National Planning Policy Framework and policy ENV3 of the Core Strategy. Without such an assessment the Local Planning Authority cannot fully assess the proposal and its potential impact in terms of flooding.
So the application will be refused unless any district councillor ‘calls it in’ by 1 pm on Wednesday.
You can download the officers report here. (141kb)