That sewage flows down the street in Bishop Monkton was a serious enough issue for it to be mentioned in the House of Commons on Wednesday, when our M.P., Sir Alec Shelbrooke, raised his concerns on the subject as part of a debate on Rural Affairs.

Sir Alec pointed out to the House that there are issues when housing developments are built where there are existing flood concerns and referred to the meetings he had held recently in the village with the parish council, the local councillor and the flood groups. Sir Alec said....” promises were made, but we are not getting anywhere. Bishop Monkton has been let down by Yorkshire Water and the EA (Environment Agency) for too long. There is a new planning application for 60 new homes, and they say that the water system can cope with it. It cannot—that is blatantly obvious.

“When these big developments go in, Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency should make them do water alleviation work through soakaways and slowing the flow, rather than just saying, “Well, according to our models, it can cope". Sewage flows down the street in that small, picturesque, beautiful Yorkshire village in my constituency, yet it is claimed that there is nothing wrong.”

For a full Hansard transcript of the debate click Sir Alec speaks at 7.12 p.m.

For a FaceBook video of part of the speech that mentions Bishop Monkton click

Sir Alec today sent the website this additional information to clarify the context of the debate.

Monday’s debate in the House was a general debate on rural affairs, as such many Members sough to raise genuine concerns around the future of the rural economy and the risks posed by the imposition of new inheritance tax rules on family farm businesses, which will impact over 900 farms in our constituency, many of whom will have to close down their family business in order to pay the new death tax. An obvious outfall of farms needing to sell land to raise funds for the death tax is that farmers will inevitably need the best price and housing developers will be on this like hawks. From this I sought to make the point that our rural villages are already struggling with the impact of centrally-imposed housing targets, which result in villages like Bishop Monkton having to take more houses without adequate infrastructure. As you can see from my speech, I made the point that there are always solutions to these technical problems, but they require cash and the will of local authorities to make them happen, e.g. by imposing conditions on planning applications to improve the drainage system right across the village and not just for new developments.