A LETTER with key contact numbers will be posted to homes in Worcester's flood plain each year from now on.

The city council - which has increased its stock of sandbags and duckboards - intends also to send an A4 summary of its responsibilities to householders to "minimise confusion" about who is held liable when a flood happens.

City councillors, Worcester's MP and the media are to receive the annual information, sent out by September each year.

Meanwhile, strategists admit their emergency planning has suffered due to the abolition of a key department.

Contract Services, which provided functions such as litter collection and street cleansing, was scrapped at the start of April.

Its director, Keith Middleton, has retired from the council and staff have been re-assigned to other departments.

Worcester City Council felt it was time to "restructure" Contract Services because several tasks had been farmed out to other organisations.

A council report, prepared for the authority's executive board, noted: "We have lost the flexibility in an emergency of having the workforce under the direct supervision of City Contract Services."

But the council said a three-person team had been created to form a "civil emergency response pool of resources in future, subject to their availability out of hours".