Council set to pay £800,000-plus to tackle flooding to Warwick homes caused by run-off from nearby car park

Warwickshire County Council is braced to pay £800,000-plus to comply with a court order from a case it lost over a year ago.

A complaint from a resident whose property was impacted by surface run-off from Cape Road car park, Warwick, ended up in court.

Labour leader Councillor John Holland last month expressed dismay over the county hiring “expensive lawyers in Birmingham” to defend the case and went on to say: “The latest I have had is that there isn’t a budget to provide a remedy as ordered by the courts.”

The council’s communications department last month said “budget will be identified” to remedy the issues and has since confirmed the “settlement was recorded by the court on February 8, 2023”.

That “included compensation, costs and disbursements” but “due to the nature of the order, we are not legally able to provide specifics of the settlement”.

Further clarification has been sought as to what parts have been paid or completed, and what the total cost of works will be for the authority.

The communications department was unable to provide that information ahead of publication but said a response would be provided as soon as possible.

Cllr Holland continued his pursuit of answers with a question to deputy leader and portfolio holder for property and finance Councillor Peter Butlin at this week's meeting of full council.

“There is a court order in place requiring the council to carry out works to protect residents' neighbouring property,” said Cllr Holland.

“Will Councillor Butlin stay involved in this to ensure the council complies fully with the court order?”

Cllr Butlin replied: “I have been briefed on this on a regular basis.

“As you know, we have had a very wet winter and flooding issues have become prevalent on Cape Road car park, which has affected the residents.

“This has been subject to the small claims court which has been settled, compensation has been paid and we have undertaken flood remediation work.

“Over the period of time since then, over the past three months we have done work with Severn Trent and various other people to come up with a scheme to put this problem right.

“We have had tenders recently which vary from £800,000 to £1.6 million – there’s a big variation that you get these days when you get quotes coming in.

“We are also doing some further work on this one, in terms of getting some value engineering in to make sure the work being done benefits the whole of Cape Road car park, future proofing it for any schemes that might come up on the Cape Road to make sure we can get some money back out of that should we develop the car park at a later date.

“We are trying to make sure the residents are protected from any further flooding while also getting value for money in terms of the property we have.”

The council said on February 15, that it anticipated approval for the funding would “take place early next week after which the work can commence” but Cllr Holland told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he had been told less than 48 hours earlier that the council had no budget to see through the work.