Block Management in Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury sits at the confluence of the Severn and the Avon and is named in five separate Environment Agency areas, more than any other town covered on this site. The River Severn at Tewkesbury warning area covers 27.09 per cent of the built-up area, the Cheltenham and Tewkesbury tributaries alert 26.69 per cent, the River Severn in Gloucestershire alert 18.93 per cent, the Severn Ham warning area 2.39 per cent, naming Abbey Mill, Upper and Lower Lode and Shakespeare Court, and the River Avon in Worcestershire alert 1.11 per cent. Fifty-three further candidate areas are near the town without covering it. The 2007 benchmark is documented precisely by the council: river levels at the Mythe gauge reached a peak of 5.43 metres on 22 July against a previous record of 5.3 metres in March 1947 and normal summer levels of around half a metre, the flood on the Severn between Upton and Gloucester was assessed as having between a 0.66 and 0.5 per cent probability of occurring in any year, an estimated 810 properties were affected, properties flooded first from surface water and smaller watercourses including the Carrant and Tirle Brooks and then from the main rivers, some twice, and the centre of the town was completely cut off from vehicles. That passage sits under a heading about the borough rather than the town, so the 810 should be quoted as published rather than restated as homes in the town. Separately the Mythe water treatment works flooded on 22 July, leaving over 350,000 people without clean water for up to seventeen days. Recorded flood outlines run 1939, 1947, 1968, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1998, 2000 and 2007. On defences the honest answer is uncomfortable: the assets recorded at the town are two structures on the Avon at Abbey Mill and Stanchard Pit that the record states are for navigation purposes, and a 5.9 kilometre run of embankment, wall, high ground and raised road on the Severn whose stated standard of protection is one year in one. None of them should be presented as protecting the town, and no named flood alleviation scheme for Tewkesbury with a date and a cost is published on any official source.

An Article 4 direction covers 7.01 per cent of the built-up area, the only such direction reaching any of the larger Gloucestershire towns covered here. Its date is recorded differently in two places and the council's own document should be preferred: the appraisal states it was confirmed on 28 October 1987, while the national register gives 1 June 1988. What it removes and which streets it covers are not published anywhere: the council's document is a five page scan with no text layer and the schedule appears nowhere else. The 2012 appraisal lists as outstanding work the extension of the Article 4 boundary to reflect the revised conservation area boundary and amendment of its provisions, which is consistent with the direction covering 7 per cent of the town against a conservation area covering 16 per cent. So a building can sit inside the conservation area and outside the direction, and the council has to be asked which.

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