Sir - The packed flooding meeting in Abingdon on Friday highlighted our justifiable concerns about future flooding.

Like Tewkesbury, two rivers flow through this town and, whilst only the Ock flooded this time, the Thames avoided it by just a few inches. The consequence if both flood at the same time does not bear thinking about.

Much of the problem is caused by development on the floodplain. People may be unaware of the unsatisfactory nature of the risk assessment process for such developments and assume that if the Environment Agency has no objection then there is no risk. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When a developer wants to build on the floodplain, they, not the EA, will produce the flood risk assessment - rather like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

They can even ignore the effect of temporary structures' in the floodplain. Thus, when assessing the risk of filling Thrupp Lake, npower ignored the 40-acre ash tip they had created when the last lakes were filled, on the grounds that it was temporary', even though it will block flood water for years.

The EA spokesman at the meeting stressed that the EA could not cope in July because it is massively underfunded and yet still expected us to believe that it has the expertise and manpower to properly oversee the current biased flood risk assessment process. This current process benefits greedy companies like npower and Tesco, boosting their already inflated profits. The losers are ordinary people whose homes and welfare are put at risk.

Marjorie White, Abingdon