A RE-THINK is needed over flood protection plans for Dorchester – according to town councillors.

They say recent floods, at Castle Park and in the London Road area, underline that 'old thinking' is not working and is unlikely to work in the future.

There are also fears that allowing the Dorchester North housing development to go ahead will only add to the county town's problems – despite the claims from developers that they will be able to control runoff from the thousands of yet to be agreed, homes.

Town councillors say that, until recently, it was assumed that the surrounding land and local watercourses would take any excess surface water away from properties and roads.

It is now claimed that the Dorchester flooding has shown that strategy no longer works: with the land totally saturated the flood waters had nowhere to go and tankers had to be brought in to pump out the area, with roads closed.

Independent Dorchester Cllr Les Fry, who has been involved in an investigation with Dorset Council officials and officers from Wessex Water, says the problems have been made worse at Castle Park by surface water systems from properties being connected to sewage pipes, over-loading them.

He says investigations have shown that systems designed to take water away from homes off Celtic Crescent were in good order and mainly free-running, until they became overwhelmed by the volume of water, with no chance of runoff to surrounding farmland because it was totally sodden.

Cllr Fry says that all the gullies off Celtic Crescent will be jet washed during this month with a mapping exercise to be carried out to trace water and sewage connections in the area and to find ways to ease the situation in the future.

Cllr Molly Rennie told a town council planning and environment committee that the policies dealing with flooding in the forthcoming Dorset Local Plan now needed firming up to be more proactive and to take account of changes in the weather.

"I'm suggesting that we ought to be beefing up our responses – they are not robust enough," she said: "it is pretty obvious that with the high levels of ground water in the area the system can't cope and we've been warned that these conditions might be more continuous now."

She said the changes in climate should result in a closer look being taken at planning applications which may more hard surfaces in some areas, increasing water run-off.

Cllr Stella Jones said other issues also needed to be examined. She said residents in her ward in Kings Road and London Road were told they could pick up sandbags from the Dorset Council depot at Charminster – which might have been helpful had they been able to get out of their homes.

She suggested, in the future, that local sandbag stores might be set up in areas likely to be affected by floods.

Campaigners against proposals for thousands of homes north of the county town have pointed to the lake-like flooding which now occurs off routes to Charminster and behind London Road in Dorchester – claiming the land is unsuitable for housing.

A spokesman for the group added: "Any development North of Dorchester would bring an increased risk of flooding – a huge development twice the size of Poundbury would bring a huge threat to the town, and to people's homes and businesses… This is not about being against development, it is about the existing town."

Cllr Sue Biles said: "The North Dorchester developers are hoping that big drains will take water away – but the water table is so high it won't take any more," she said.

She agreed with taking another look at policies dealing with flooding and said that monitoring of likely flooding also needed to be improved.

The town council discussion came a day ahead of Dorset Council's Cabinet proposal to join the South West Flood and Coastal (SWFaC) shared service.

Dorset Council's Cabinet member for Place, Cllr Jon Andrews, said: "Dorset is already feeling the impact of more frequent and more intense weather events, and we must act decisively to protect our residents, our economy and our coastline."

Cllr Andrews said that joining the SWFaC partnership will improve Dorset Council's ability to secure national grant funding and increase its access to more experts, while reducing a reliance on external consultants.