Hampstead Heath flood plan - officials consider an emergency response to rising water threat

Published: 28 April 2011
by JAMIE WELHAM

AN emergency evacuation plan for residents in Hampstead is being drawn up in response to the threat of serious flooding on the Heath.

The Town Hall said it was considering how to assist more than 1,000 households and move them to designated shelters in the event of a major incident.

Possible flooding has been predicted by government scientists, which in a doomsday scenario could affect up to 1,500 people in Gospel Oak, Dartmouth Park and Parliament Hill. In May last year, the boating pond burst its banks, and in 1975 one man died and hundreds of Gospel Oak residents had to be rescued in rowing boats.

A £12million dam construction project has been proposed to make the ponds on the Heath safer.

Last week, the Town Hall’s head of emergency planning, Melissa Brackley, told the council’s scrutiny committee any evacuation procedure would be complicated by the large number of basement conversions in the area.

She said: “In the event of a dam breach do we tell people to evacuate? It could be very risky because people could be hit on the street. Or do we tell people to go upstairs? This is what we will be looking at when we develop the plan.”

Thirty-five shelters have been identified across the borough which could accommodate evacuees in a state of emergency.

Experts have warned there is a 1 per cent chance every 100 years of the dams that hold the ponds in place failing. It comes in the wake of tough new environmental laws brought in by the Environment Agency.

Heath managers the City of London admitted they had major reservations about the dam proposal, which would lead to the closures of all but one swimming pond while the work takes place. But officials stressed they had a duty to take action.

“It has given us a lot of agony,” said Michael Welbank, chairman of the Hampstead Heath Management Committee. 

“They will be disruptive to build. We would rather not have to build it. But we have a duty to do so. Not to do so would be to abrogate our responsibility to the citizens of the borough.” 

He added: “The 1975 floods show that this can happen again. If we did nothing and there was a dam failure we have thousands of people at risk. 

“I don’t want to have to be in front of a TV camera in a few years’ time explaining why we didn’t do anything.”

The City of London said it was crucial to find a “soft engineering” solution, to ensure the landscape was not compromised during or after the building process. The scheme could be completed as soon as 2014, with planning permission expected to be acquired in 2013.