Villagers have succeeded in blocking plans to build a home in an area already prone to frequent flooding.

West Oxfordshire District Council's lowlands planning committee unanimously refused NPES Developments' application to build just a single four-bed house on land off Chapel Lane in Standlake near Witney.

Standlake sits next to the Windrush, close to the point where it joins the River Thames.

The village and nearby Northmoor suffer regular flooding and Thames Water frequently supplies tankers to help alleviate flood damage and sewage spills.

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There were 133 objections to the proposal, including from Standlake Parish Council, and district council planning officers recommended refusal.

Oxford Mail: Standlake borehole data

Local campaigners argued the developer had misrepresented the flood risk by only taking occasional manual measurements.

They hired a professional borehole logger and installed it in the garden of a next-door property.

Campaigner Paula Gaffney said: “The groundwater level data was critically important to our case.

"The village of Standlake is heavily affected by flooding, so this is a major consideration in any proposed new development, but without evidence, it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions.

“For this reason, we dug two boreholes adjacent to the proposed development site and rented a water level logger to take measurements automatically every 15 minutes, 24/7.

“Perhaps the most striking conclusion was the stark contrast between our continuous data stream and the developer’s occasional manual observations from the borehole that they had constructed in the middle of the proposed development site.

"In particular, the planning committee was interested to note that the applicant’s water level observations did not coincide with any of the heavy rainfall events that took place.”

Oxfordshire County Council’s drainage engineer visited the site and also said the applicant's data had not been recorded at the peak levels of flooding.

Since their success in fighting the application, the campaigners have been contacted by other villages seeking help and advice on ways to handle planning applications in flood zones.

Oxford Mail: Windrush Path at Standlake in 2017

“Our recommendation is always to gather reliable data,” said Ms Gaffney.

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“We were very impressed with the diligence of the West Oxfordshire District Council's Lowlands planning subcommittee.

"In fact, one of the councillors remarked that this was the first time an application had been refused on the grounds of flood risk.”

Other objections to the plans were that Chapel Lane was too narrow to provide safe access.

Although there had been accidents, they were not logged on CrashMap, the official data published by the Department for Transport.

This is because the police only upload the details if they have attended and injury has occurred.