The start of February marks the opening of the election silly-season and with every Havant borough councillor and both MPs up for re-election, it promises to be an interesting year. We’re looking forward to a few plump examples of fair game breaking cover in the coming weeks.
The first to be flushed out of the undergrowth was this announcement from Havant Borough Council yesterday, rushed out in a hurry with the essential link corrected this morning:
The link at the foot of the press release takes the reader to the Coastal Partners Langstone blog, from which the following introductory text is taken.
“Earlier in the month the Leader of Havant Borough Council chaired a meeting with the consenting organisations Chichester Harbour Conservancy (CHC), Natural England and Environment Agency. This meeting together with a further meeting with all the multi-agency organisations has led to a collaborative approach being reached. To add weight to the commitment of working together these organisation have agreed upon a Statement of Common Ground. This sets out that the partners agree to the following two priorities in the medium term:
– Maintenance of the Mill Pond wall, and
– Maintenance of the coastal footpath along its current route by construction of a footbridge towards Wade Lane.
The next steps are for CHC to investigate the costs and programme for construction of a footbridge, and HBC to investigate appropriate maintenance work to the wall that will prevent a breach to the Mill Pond. Once this further information is gathered the multi-agency group can begin to set out an implementation plan.“
The full Statement of Common Ground can be viewed below, actually dwarfed by the length of the Council’s press release but clearly attributable to the same source, lacking the attention to consistency, grammar and clarity that we’ve come to expect of Coastal Partners.
The elephant in the room?
The ‘elephant under the bridge’, of course, is to be found in the following sentence:
“Maintenance of the coastal footpath along its current route by construction of a footbridge towards Wade Lane.”
The persistence of the footbridge in the ‘second priority’ demonstrates that the recommendation in the rather partisan RHDHV report is still being pursued, a disappointing objective which owes more to political expediency than sound scientific and engineering judgment.
The Environment Agency must remind the owners of the millpond of their responsibilities for maintaining the uninterrupted flow of the Lymbourne Stream and the correct level in the millpond. With that done, the small but critically-compromised stretch of sea wall for which the bridge is deemed a ‘solution’, will be saved. That short stretch should then be included in the scope of Havant Borough Council’s welcomed permission to rebuild the Millpond wall, eliminating any necessity for a footbridge.
If the owners won’t assume their riparian responsibilities, then the Environment Agency and Havant Borough Council, both signatories to this Statement of Common Ground, should step in and take appropriate action.
Now that might just be a vote winner.
#havantmatters
Havant Civic Society 