Flooding: Staffordshire

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for securing this important debate because my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North, and Kidsgrove and Talke, is fortunate to be close to the sources of several rivers, brooks and streams. Although my constituency does not have mighty torrents running through it, it is by no means immune to flooding.

Through Norton Green runs the canal feeder to the Caldon canal and the River Trent. The river is hardly dredged. The canal feeder is man-made and beset with historical issues and when it rains, both flood: a double hit to the village of Norton Green. The river is the responsibility of the Environment Agency, and the canal feeder is the responsibility of Severn Trent Water: two agencies that, if they co-ordinated their work, could help alleviate the problem that my constituents face in Norton Green when it rains.

The houses in between the river and canal feeder are regularly cut off on an island of their very own when the Trent and the feeder flood the only roads to the village. I must give credit to the residents of Norton Green who pull together, and to the three local councillors, Dave Evans, James Smith and Carl Edwards, as they lend a hand to bail water out of the village.

Further downriver, properties and families who live on the strategic A53 Leek Road, which connects the major settlements of north Staffordshire, regularly face flooding. The road is not on a floodplain—it is relatively high up—but water drainage from the road runs into the River Trent; when the river levels increase, it backs up the drainage and floods the road, cutting the main arterial route connecting Newcastle, Stoke and Leek.

Further to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths), I highlight two examples of my constituents tackling flooding caused by poor drainage. First, Mr David Barber contacted my team pleading for something to be done about flooding on The Avenue in Kidsgrove, which runs down his neighbour’s property and obstructs pedestrians, including schoolchildren, with ankle-deep water. An investigative team from the council was sent out and discovered a severe blockage in the drains on both sides of the road. Repairs are finally being made, but the stress it caused residents is extremely unwelcome.

Similarly, Mr Amrik Rai has been battling poor drainage for the past 12 years, with his home being severely flooded twice over that period. The family is consumed by worry every time it starts to rain. Councillors in my patch have been fighting for Severn Trent Water to undertake work to link storm pipes, to prevent the overloading of single pipes during heavy rainfall years. Like Amrik, residents of Braithwell Drive have been fighting localised flooding due to poor drain management for more than a decade.

Staffordshire County Council and Stoke-on-Trent City Council continue to face funding pressures, meaning that routine maintenance of gullies and highway drainage is less regular than it used to be. Across Stoke-on-Trent, though, £4.2 million from various partners is being spent on flood alleviation schemes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) referred to, including on redirecting the River Trent downstream in the neighbouring constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central, which will benefit floodplains upstream in my constituency.

Locally, we suffer from a Victorian drainage network, underfunded and over capacity. Clarity is needed as to which authority, agency or company is responsible for what drainage. Disputes between Severn Trent Water and local councils in Staffordshire over responsibility for drains and ditches take years to resolve, but the actual work needed to alleviate the flooding takes only days to carry out. There is something wrong when it takes longer to establish who is responsible for the works than the time it takes to carry out needed improvements. We need to adjust the priority given to everyday maintenance and drainage of rivers and amend the gap in everyday funding for such essential services.