8:57am Thursday 9th August 2007
By Peter Luff
The recent floods in our county, worse even than the dreadful floods of 1998, were a devastating blow to hundreds of homeowners and businesses.
There are questions to ask, especially about the Environment Agency’s failure to get up the flood barriers in Worcester and Upton-upon-Severn, but there was one really encouraging thing to come
out of these floods and that was just how well the emergency and public services dealt with the crisis and its aftermath.
Police, fire and ambulance services all performed a remarkable job, with staff working beyond the call of duty to rescue people and then help the clear-up. For example, in Evesham fire crews helped
clean off the tennis courts and refloated boats.
The district and county councils did exceptionally well. Look at how quickly riverside areas in Worcester and Evesham were cleaned and restored. And look at how quickly work began on repairing the
B4084 at Cropthorne.
During the crisis, scores of staff at Wychavon District Council’s offices did all they could to minimise the impact of the flood – senior council officers were filling sandbags into the
small hours. So good were Wychavon’s emergency centres that one grateful stranger who was cared for in one of them wrote to the national press to say thank you and well done.
The Government has said all the right things since the floods, but we must keep it to its promises. Last year it cut the Environment Agency’s budget to help pay for the mismanagement of the
Rural Payments Agency – it must never do that again. And the additional £200 million funding for flood defences it has announced won’t be introduced for four years.
Ministers have said councils won’t be out of pocket – so they must help Worcestershire County Council pay for the £5 million-plus of damage to our roads.
And the Government must not make flooding worse by encouraging building on the flood plain. When John Prescott visited Worcestershire in November 2000 to see the impact of floods in Upton-on-Severn,
he rightly said. “We should manage the flood plains more effectively and we shouldn’t be putting houses on them.”
Building on flood plains makes flooding worse by concreting over green fields and makes the people in those homes very vulnerable. As Worcestershire gears up to build thousands more new homes, we
should remember that they’re called flood plains for a reason!
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