THIS is not a flooded field. Oh no it isn’t. Your eyes must be deceiving you. Perhaps it’s a mirage?

Because this meadow alongside Britford Lane in Harnham does not flood. Definitely not.

That’s why it doesn’t feature on the Environment Agency’s flood map of Salisbury. Obvious, isn’t it?

There are other people who really ought to know but who don’t seem to think that flooding is a problem there, either.

Take, for example, the PR team acting on behalf of the field’s owner, the Earl of Radnor’s Longford Estate, and the Christian charity St Nicholas Hospital, which owns the equally soggy plot next door.

These public-spirited organisations sincerely want to see a housing estate built on their land to provide “muchneeded new homes” and “improve choice and competition locally”. I’m sure the money’s just an afterthought.

They recently exhibited their plans at the Guildhall, and there was a distinctly surreal note to a conversation reported by one woman who attended.

She’d seen this meadow under water, and said so. But it couldn’t have been flooded, one of the young PR types told her.

Why? Because the Agency maps said it wasn’t susceptible to flooding.

“It was probably waterlogged,” he reassured her, “and that was different.”

So although I took several photos including this one on Monday morning (you can see more on the Facebook page: Facebook.com/savethemeadows) and those rather large pools of water looked like flooding to me, I guess I was mistaken. They were just waterlogging.

“The proposed development does not sit on water meadows,” according to the Longford website. I’m sure it’s right, technically speaking.

But just in case, the website assures us that with “associated water management incorporated into the scheme, the construction of this development is likely to improve drainage locally”.

Anyone thinking of moving in will have to hope so. But that water will go somewhere.

I expect the folk downstream in Fordingbridge will be glad of it.

I did ask the Environment Agency whether it would be updating its Salisbury flood map. It will. But I’m told it’s a complex job which won’t be finished before 2018.

However, I have discovered a website that could provide valuable ammunition to opponents of the development.

Called gaugemap.co.uk, it shows river level, flow and groundwater measurements taken by the Agency at 15-minute intervals every day from points across the country, including Harnham Bridge.

According to these, the river level was still within its ‘Typical Range’ and hadn’t reached the official ‘Flooding Possible’ level when I took my photos.

So was the field flooded? Oh yes it was.

anneriddle36@gmail.com