Cricket club fears being 'treated as casualty' to make way for bypass plans

A Derbyshire cricket club says it is “being treated as a casualty for the bigger picture” after plans for a long-awaited bridge and bypass were approved despite concerns. At a South Derbyshire District Council meeting on Tuesday night (November 12) tweaked plans for the Walton Bridge and Bypass, previously priced at £20 million, were given the go ahead, ahead of the project’s intended completion by the end of 2025.

However, the plan would have the unwanted consequence of causing two homes and a number of buildings at Walton on Trent Cricket Club to flood. The properties already flood, councillors were told, by 1cm in a one-in-100-year flood, but this would increase to 14cm as a result of the new bypass and bridge being built.

Cllr Amy Wheelton had said this showed “some residents are more important than others”. Mitigation measures for all those affected properties are now being drawn up for approval by the owners before any work starts, following the intervention of councillors last month, deferring a decision until those talks had started.

In October, councillors said the affected homeowners were elderly and with long-term health conditions and had only been made aware of the impact on their homes the week before the October 1 meeting and had to be told by their neighbours. A statement for the sporting facility had read: “Walton on Trent Cricket Club have only ever wanted to protect the club for future generations to enjoy cricket in one of the best sporting venues in Derbyshire, yet we are now being treated as a casualty for the bigger picture.”

Large nets are already having to be built where the bridge and bypass pass the club to avoid the potential harm of a cricket ball being hit out of the neighbouring pitch and into traffic. These would be built and maintained by the bypass and bridge developer, Countryside Partnerships or a company appointed by the firm, “in perpetuity”, the council has agreed.

The 150-year-old club had raised concerns that “should the nets be damaged this could result in damage to a user of the bridge and playing cricket whilst the nets are damaged could put the club at risk of not being insured and that ceasing to play would result in both financial and point deduction penalties from the league and possible ejection”. It said: “Both of these scenarios would jeopardise the viability of the club.”

“The club wants to ensure its survival for many more years to come and to provide an amenity for the village and for a place for cricket players of the future.” At this week’s meeting, Cllr Wheelton said the cricket club to date had only been offered pumps to pump water off their site during flooding and no further mitigation.

She said the scheme needed to be approved so that the developer could “get on and build the bridge”. The bridge and bypass is being built as part of the development of 2,100 homes on the former Drakelow Power Station site and must be completed by December 31, 2025 at the latest.

It will connect Station Lane west of the village with Main Street to the north, crossing over the River Trent and replacing the notorious long-term “temporary” Bailey Bridge, which causes traffic bottlenecks. If the developer does not have the bridge and bypass built in time it will lose £1.5 million it agreed to place in an Escrow bank account as a sign of a commitment to follow through with the scheme.

Approval of the tweaked changes may still need to be referred to the Secretary of State due to a current holding objection from the Environment Agency, which has not yet finished assessing the flood risk of the scheme. Council officers say this assessment is due to be received imminently and could overturn the objection, meaning the referral would not be necessary.

They said the scheme could still be approved due to the “substantial benefits of the scheme clearly and convincingly outweighing the flood risk to a small number of properties”. The bridge would have a maximum height of seven metres above ground, with the design to keep the route above flood water by 1.5 metres in a one in 100-year flood event, with a maximum width of 13.25 metres.

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