After a major rainfall event on 25th October, Joe Robertson has been taking the Council and responsible agencies to task over their flood response. In his capacity as Chair of the Council’s Corporate Scrutiny Committee, Joe has summoned the Environment Agency to a meeting to brief local Councillors and face questions for the way they are responding to residents’ concerns.
Joe visited one of the worst affected areas – Ryde Monktonmead – together with local Councillor Karen Lucioni and MP Bob Seely in the days immediately following record rainfall events. Controversially, during the storms, the Environment Agency instructed local contractors to install only 2 out of a maximum 6 flood boards in the £5m flood defence wall around Simeon Street Recreation Ground. Over 100 homes were subsequently flooded during the morning of 25th October, a mere 2 years after the previous flood event and less than 4 years after the flood defences were completed.
Elsewhere on the Island, the road between Brading and Sandown has been closed for weeks with houses flooded in Nicholas Close. Binstead was also badly effected, another area along with Ryde and Bembridge which was subject to a section 19 Flood Investigation two years ago but has yet to receive any additional spending on the recommendations of the reports that followed.
Responding to residents’ concerns, Joe said, “Like most residents I am rather tired of hearing the same excuses like, ‘it was unusually heavy rainfall’ or ‘ we are looking into how we can better improve our response’. In the case of Ryde, millions was spent on flood defences in 2018 and they were not fully used when heavy rain was forecast in October. We subsequently learned that the Environment Agency ordered the contractors on site to travel over to Newport and were surprised when the contractors got stuck and couldn’t get back to Ryde to monitor the situation because of flooding blocked the road in Binstead and Havenstreet.
“Meanwhile in Brading, the Environment Agency have admitted that they keep the water levels in Brading marshes higher than previously to support wading birds. It is little wonder that residents I spoke to are concerned that this decision is slowing water draining into the marshes at Yarbridge and contributing to the prolonged road closure and flooding in Nicholson Close.”
The meeting of Corporate Scrutiny Committee with the Environment Agency and Southern Water in attendance will take place on 12th December.
