OUR back garden at Hardens Mead overlooks the floodplain of the Avon and we have seen many floods in the 48 years we have lived here. I can remember the times when the whole area, as far as the eye could see, was just one vast lake. The canoeists from the sailing club were in their element, no longer confined to the river but paddling over the railings and disappearing into the distance. When I read that Chippenham 2020 is going to build a huge new estate on the high ground to the east of this floodplain and is going to counteract the increased run-off by constructing ‘attenuation ponds’ along the edge of the floodplain, I have to laugh. Sure, these ponds will absorb the run-off in normal times, they might even slow it down below the greenfield run-off rate but when the entire floodplain turns into a vast lake these pitiful ponds will just be swamped in a tide of water. Then the increased run-off will come into its own and Chippenham town centre will disappear under an avalanche of water.

When this happens, as it surely will, the people behind Chippenham 2020 and the planners who approved their scheme should be held to account and made to pay for the damage out of their own pockets. Wiltshire Council should look elsewhere to build their unwanted houses, the high ground to the east of Chippenham is just far too risky for the town centre.

JOHN PALMER, Hardens Mead, Chippenham