Floods and warnings

We are meant to be grateful to the government and the Environment Agency for predicting a sea surge and telling people to leave their homes yesterday to avoid the flood. I am certainly grateful that on this occasion the flood defences worked and the sea surge was not as big as predicted. I would feel more grateful to the authorities if they got on with sorting out the mess after last summer’s inundations, and did some work to prevent them happening again.

I spent part of Friday visiting people in my constituency who still cannot live properly or at all in their homes which were damaged by flood water and sewage last summer. There is still a row going on between the various authorities over who is to blame, and who might be bothered to do something to sort the problem out. It simply is not good enough that four months later no-one is taking responsibility and no-one is even carrying out works to stop homes being deluged with sewage. I will carry on harrying the authorities until there is some follow jup and some action. The government just doing a few interviews on the media and sahying job done does not protect people’s homes.

2 Comments

  1. Brian Tomkinson
    November 10, 2007

    This is typical of life in Britain today. These authorities take their lead from ministers in this discredited Labour government- all talk but no action!

  2. Man in a Shed
    November 10, 2007

    What's frightening about all this is how the event seemed to come from no-where.

    Why is there no political instance on building better sea defences – so we don't have to rely on luck ?

    The Dutch expect their system to be over topped once per 1000 years, we only have once per 100.

    Reply: I agree we ought to do more to put in flood defences. I have often made this case in the Commons.

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