Developer scraps plans for Erewash apartment block over high-level flood risk

The planned retirement apartment complex off Station Road, Sandiacre. Image from Corstorphine & Wright.

By Eddie Bisknell – Local Democracy Reporting Service

A developer has scrapped plans to build a four-storey apartment block in a Derbyshire town after the site’s flood risk was increased to the highest level.

McCarthy Stone’s plans for a four-storey block of retirement apartments for the over 55s were submitted last October for land off Station Road, Sandiacre, next to Lidl and the Erewash Canal.

At the time, paperwork with the planning application, filed to Erewash Borough Council, showed the site was sitting entirely in flood zone two – the second of three levels – with a one per cent chance of flooding.

However, an updated assessment from the Environment Agency saw the site almost entirely rebadged as flood zone three, joining a swathe of Sandiacre homes in the highest risk of flooding between the Erewash Canal and River Trent.

This flood zone three swathe now covers all of the homes off Cross Street, Gas Street, Westminster Avenue, Regent Street, Rutland Grove, Bridge Street, Grasmere Street and Canal Street, many of which flooded extensively under several feet of floodwater during Storm Babet in October 2023.

Previously, only parts of this area, closest to the river and canal, were in flood zone two, with 53 affordable homes approved in Gas Street by Erewash Borough Council in 2021 – two years before Storm Babet – on the proviso that only parts of the site were in zone three, with residents already warning the council about historic flooding.

Housebuilding in flood zone three previously used to be effectively outlawed but planning legislation now allows for exceptional circumstances in flood zone three to allow homes, in a bid to hit the 1.5 million targeted new homes put forward by the Labour Government.

The Guardian reported last year that 100,000 homes could be built in the next five years in the highest risk flood zone.

The decision from McCarthy Stone has been made public through an East Midlands Combined County Authority report for brownfield housing funding.

It details that the firm had applied for £795,000 but has withdrawn its application “following a recent amendment to the Flood Risk Zone by the Environment Agency, which adversely impacts scheme delivery”.

McCarthy Stone declined to comment.

The site, on the banks of the canal, opposite the Springfield events hall, a former Victorian church, remains overgrown and fenced off with chipboard panels.

An EMCCA spokesperson said: “We have received an application to the Brownfield Housing Fund for the Station Road scheme in Sandiacre.

“However, the developer has chosen to withdraw its application following a recent change to the flood risk zone by the Environment Agency, which they have advised impacts the viability and delivery of the scheme.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service in February last year, following the publication of an investigation into the impact of Storm Babet, residents said they had cars written off and lost all of their downstairs furniture as a result of flooding.

A total of 129 homes were reported as flooded by Derbyshire County Council in the report, with an investigation saying the cause of the flood was the river overtopping after record-breaking rainfall, compounding significant wet weather in the weeks before.

An Environment Agency flood alert was not issued to the area until six hours after homes were being flooded, by which time many residents had already been rehomed in nearby hotels and in some cases carried away to safety through the floodwater.

Residents had said they now live with the continual fear that whenever there is heavy rainfall their homes and belongings will all be decimated again.

Fortunately for some, numerous properties in the area were either not affected or not affected as badly as many others due to being built on higher platforms, with steps leading up to their front doors, with only their garages affected.

Plenty of properties are three-storey homes with their kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms all on upper floors.