Fears new housing development is flooding village

Yaxley Parish council members Andrew Wood and Helen Taylor said they are paying the price for Peterborough City Council's decisions

Villagers fear excess surface water from a nearby housing development has led to “increased flooding” in the area.

More than 5,000 homes are being built as part of the Great Haddon development on Peterborough City Council land, to the south of Peterborough, just outside Yaxley.

Tracy Reed, a Yaxley resident for the last 36 years, said she has “never seen this amount of standing water” before in the village and described it as "worrying”.

But Peterborough City Council said the flooding was due to the lack of maintenance of the watercourse - a claim Yaxley Parish Council denies.

The excess water from Great Haddon is regularly flooding the pond behind St Peter's Church on Waterslade Road in Yaxley

Residents said the situation is "unacceptable and will get worse" if nothing is done soon.

Helen Taylor, the clerk to Yaxley Parish Council, said: “People’s houses are being flooded. The field behind the church is rented out by us for horses, but it’s [been] unusable since September.

"The watercourse has always been maintained and there was never an issue before."

Residents in Yaxley want something radical to be done to sort the flooding issue

Andrew Wood, parish council vice chairman, said it was paying the price for the decisions of another authority.

“We have been told the developer is currently only discharging one-third of the approved amount of water.

"The consequences could be enormous when it is up to full capacity, which we believe is 32.7l per second.

“It's not just the quantity but also the quality of the water and It’s impacting us environmentally. The fauna and flora is damaged and the pond has deteriorated.”

The Great Haddon development will comprise more than 5,000 homes with the first homes occupied by Spring

The area falls under Huntingdon District Council.

However, the planning authority for the development is Peterborough City Council which allowed the developers, Vistry East Anglia Group, to discharge excess surface water into the watercourse that runs into Yaxley.

Residents said they are regularly seeing standing water along Waterslade Road for at least nine months

MP for North West Cambridgeshire Shailesh Vara said Yaxley residents have his full support.

“Not enough attention was given to the flood risk for Yaxley and its residents at the early planning stages of the development," he said.

Yaxley Parish Council said the developer's pipe was larger than Yaxley's watercourse pipe

In response to the concerns raised by the parish council, a spokesperson for Peterborough City Council said: “Our sustainable drainage team has provided Yaxley Parish Council with Environment Agency flood maps which show the site was always part of the Yaxley catchment.

“Until the developer’s sustainable drainage systems is developed, which we have asked them to do as a priority, we have recommended [they] restrict the flows downstream to prevent flooding.”

Vistry Group said it had obtained all necessary permissions from the planning authority.

A spokesperson for the firm said: “We have been engaging with all stakeholders to find a suitable solution to the concerns raised by Yaxley Parish Council and this is ongoing.”