Question
At the Executive meeting on 28th March 2019, I asked about the issue of the frequent flooding of the B3030 King Street Lane Winnersh between Sainsbury’s and Allnatt Avenue that impacts on the travelling public and adjacent residents by flooding their gardens and has now occurred 36 times since March 2018.
In his response, the Executive Member agreed to an onsite meeting with myself and local residents. In an e-mail exchange on the 1st April 2019, it was agreed to meet soon after the CCTV survey results were available which were envisaged within a couple of weeks. However, following being elected to this Council I now find that no CCTV survey has been carried out and there are still flooding events taking place impacting on residents. Another three months has been lost due to in the inefficiency of this Council.
What urgent action is the Executive Member going to take to expedite resolving this long-standing issue?
Minutes:
Question
At the Executive meeting on 28th March 2019, I asked about the issue of the frequent flooding of the B3030 King Street Lane Winnersh between Sainsbury’s and Allnatt Avenue that impacts on the travelling public and adjacent residents by flooding their gardens and has now occurred 39 times since March 2018.
In his response, the Executive Member agreed to an onsite meeting with myself and local residents. In an e-mail exchange on the 1st April 2019, it was agreed to meet soon after the CCTV survey results were available which were envisaged within a couple of weeks. However, following being elected to this Council I now find that no CCTV survey has been carried out and there are still flooding events taking place impacting on residents. Another three months has been lost due to in the inefficiency of this Council.
What urgent action is the Executive Member going to take to expedite resolving this long-standing issue?
Answer
I have only just taken this role on so the previous discussions were with the previous Executive Member for the Environment.
Yes I agree with you there is a problem there which needs to be resolved. Following that Executive meeting on 28th March 2019 Officers did respond quite quickly by visiting the affected area.
Detailed investigation by the Officers revealed that the problem was caused by Sainsbury’s private drainage system which is connected to the highways drainage system. When the system is full Sainsbury’s empty that system and that tends to lead to water overwhelming the highways drainage system and hence the flooding.
Officers met Sainsbury’s in April 2019 and it became apparent that there was a problem with one of the drainage pumps. That was replaced and fixed and there was no further flooding reported and as such no CCTV survey was commissioned by the Council.
However on 11th June Officers once again received complaints from the residents of further flooding and I believe there was a meeting arranged for 17th June between yourself and Councillor DuBey but I am not sure if that took place.
However I was told that was to discuss a potential solution but moving forward we will be carrying out dye testing, CCTV and jetting works in this location, and staff have re-engaged with Sainsbury’s in the faint hope to achieve a solution for this problem. So watch this space.
Supplementary Question
I am not criticising the Officers I am criticising the process which has happened because this has been going on for an awful long time as I said. No CCTV surveys have been undertaken which was promised and it is only since I have been elected I have found this out and it was following a meeting on 17th June with the Officer that I found out that there was no CCTV.
As I stated at the Executive meeting in March I had reported this last year, in June and again in November. I had lots of evidence but sadly nobody would come and talk to me at all because I knew where the flooding was coming from and if it wasn’t for my intervention on 17th June this serious matter of flooding would have continued because no proper action was taking place. So what measure will the Executive Member put in place to ensure that when reported incidences such as this are submitted either by Councillors or by residents they are actually taken seriously and actioned urgently as they clearly have not been in this particular instance?
Supplementary Answer provide by the Leader of Council
Every complaint that you give to Officers is treated seriously and it is wrong to assume that they do not. The assumption was that the flooding occurrence had not occurred again and therefore the problem was fixed which in a lot of cases of flooding that is the case. So I think you are wrong in that assumption that your complaints are not taken seriously.