Surrey to increase spending on preventing and dealing with flooding (25th January)

£800,000 extra to be invested in capital investment – £1.35m to be spent on gully cleansing.

During the Full Council Meeting on 23rd January SCC’s Executive Member for Transport, Helyn Clack, made the following statement.

“There is now mounting scientific evidence that human activity is increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which have compounded natural climate change. The evidence shows that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are raising the earth's temperature and causing other changes in climate. Winters will be wetter and summers will be drier. It is predicted that there could be water shortages every summer and more damage from flooding almost every winter.

And so I think we are right in believing that climate change predictions suggest that heavy rain storms are increasingly likely, and that this creates increased likelihood of flooding on public highways and on land adjacent to waterways. However, the problem is not just one of climate change.

We have additional pressures arising from increased development across Surrey, be that commercial or residential, and the run off from that development puts pressure on existing drainage. Without a doubt we need to have a detailed scrutiny of the causes of flooding in order that we identify the current solutions.

In the meantime, let me set out what our response to the problem is as a Highways Authority.

First, officers are already producing a report to identify the specific locations where we have problems. This will be done very quickly, because the problem sites are known to local officers and committees, but this will be the first time that we have brought it all together in such a comprehensive way.

Second, we will be allocating more of the Highways budget to increase the number of gully cleans per year in worst affected areas. Last year we spent £1.1 million on gully cleansing; next year, subject to Council's approval, we plan to increase that spend to £1.35 million. In some places gullies will be cleaned two or three times as frequently as at present. In addition to cleansing gullies more often, we will bring in more specialist equipment to pump away floodwater.

Third, even though we will increase gully cleaning we will still have roads where persistent flooding continues due to more deep-seated problems. To deal with this we intend to invest an extra £800k in capital, subject to Council's approval, as part of a programme of investment across the county”.