26th December 2025
When council officers decide that flood risk is no longer open for discussion, something has gone badly wrong.
At Padden Brook, all references to the need for a Flood Risk Assessment have reportedly been blocked after being labelled “vexatious” under the Freedom of Information Act. This designation has not only halted FOI requests, but has also been applied to questions submitted for council meetings—effectively banning the subject altogether.
This is not robust administration. It is institutional stonewalling.
Flood Risk Assessments are not optional or decorative. They are a fundamental safeguard required precisely because development near watercourses carries inherent danger. To classify persistent, reasonable questions about flood risk as vexatious is to confuse civic responsibility with nuisance.
The parallels with the A555 are impossible to ignore. Residents warned of flood risk before construction. Those concerns were minimised. Flooding followed. Now, rather than engaging with flood risk evidence at Padden Brook, the response appears to be to remove the topic from scrutiny altogether.
Using FOI legislation to silence legitimate concern undermines public trust and weakens democratic accountability. Transparency does not mean controlling which questions are allowed—it means answering them.
Flood risk is not vexatious. Ignoring it is.
Are the actions of Monitoring Officer Vicki Bates and Information Governance Lead Liz Sykes even insurable?
