I have travelled around the constituency yesterday and today to see how places are withstanding the torrents of water. The main roads are passable, though you need to drive with care as some of the puddles are deep and sometimes cars approaching in the other direction are over the mid point of the carriageway to avoid deep water. Mill Lane Sindlesham is closed.
I have had various past meetings with the Council, Environment Agency and Network Rail to try to get ditches and rivers cleared of obstacles on a regular basis and to put in anti flood measures where needed. If constituents are experiencing serious problems again please let me know and I will pursue the cases further.
January 6, 2014
Sir,
You might also like to strongly encourage the building of temporary flood storage ponds, which are areas of land designed to flood in times of high rainfall, to store flood waters safely instead of allowing these waters to proceed downstream and cause problems. It might also be a very good idea to resume river dredging to permit faster drainage than occurs at present.
Finally, even if you cannot stop people building on flood plain land, a by-law that forces anyone selling a house built upon such flood-prone land to obtain a signed affadavit from any purchaser to the effect that the purchaser knows that the area is prone to flooding. This would make it much more difficult to sell such properties to unsuspecting idiots, and the presence of this affadavit ought to remove any sympathy one might have for the flood-hit householder.