After South Derbyshire has suffered considerable flooding, I was able to confirm the Government has opened up a financial scheme to help residents and businesses that have flooded. This will be processed via the District Council.
In order to qualify more than 25 properties in South Derbyshire must have suffered internal damage. It is therefore important to now collate and document exactly where flooding of homes has occurred. We need to determine where the flood water came from and look for ways to try alleviate this in the future.
In view of the ongoing flooding problems I felt a meeting with Frank McArdle, Chief Executive of South Derbyshire District Council was essential in order for me to hear what Council staff have been able to do to help on the ground following storm Dennis and understand what lessons have been learnt following storm Ciara.
He was able to tell me that from the moment we were advised of Storm Ciara teams began working round the clock to try to shore up flood defences to protect resident’s homes from flooding. Sadly, despite all of their efforts, a number of homes did flood and then the teams turned their full attention to helping with the clean-up. Sadly they had to repeat this cycle again because of Storm Dennis. This time SDDC had eight staff filling and delivering sandbags from 4pm to 10pm, with further late night call outs.
I will be having discussions with the Environment Agency regarding river flooding and what further defences can be put in place. Also, there are points where the drains simply cannot cope with the volume of water when we have downpours of rain and I am having a meeting with Derbyshire County Council to talk about what engineering work can be done to ensure the drains can cope.
My heart goes out to everyone affected by flooding and I would like to thank the emergency services and Council staff for all their hard work. Please be assured I will be pushing all of the agencies involved to do everything necessary to try to ensure this is not a situation which keeps repeating itself. Sadly this is a multi-faceted issue and will not be solved overnight but as a Constituency we have been successful in receiving money for flood alleviation work before so I know, working together our authorities can bid again to make life better and safer for our residents and business in the future.
If your property had flood water inside and you have not been in touch with SDDC please contact the Council on 01283 595795, alternatively email [email protected]
