Flooding in West Norfolk down to lack of investment by the Conservative Government

In our weekly Friday Politics column, Liberal Democrat councillor Rob Colwell discusses flooding problems in the borough...

Flooding is once again in the news. Across Britain, communities are suffering as flood defences prove inadequate. West Norfolk is no exception, with residents in communities such as Pott Row, Grimston and Roydon having to contend with constant water gushing from manholes for over two weeks. The area is besieged by tankers trying to help but to no avail. As a result, residents are living in constant fear that their homes will be flooded. They are even fearful of flushing their own toilets.

I took the E. coli testing kit I purchased to check the extent of the sewage pollution on our beaches in the areas affected. I wanted to see for myself whether the flooding was just rainwater. Sadly, the results confirmed it was not.

These are not the only areas in our locality affected by flooding. West Winch, South Creake and Shernbourne have been badly hit recently and several cycle paths in and around Lynn in the Gaywood area have become impassable. There is also anxiety about the state of the drainage ditches in the Springwood area of Lynn, where Anglian Water has denied to me they are responsible even though they appear to be the legal owners. The county council should be given greater enforcement powers to ensure that local landowners, including farmers, keep the waterways on their land clear. There should also be stricter controls to ensure that homes are not built on floodplains in locations where we are making it far more likely that in the future homes will be hit by flooding.

I’m sure I join everyone else in the community in expressing my thanks to the workforce who have tried to help in the most recent crises, sometimes putting their own festive celebrations on hold. They tried their best to help.

I only wish that the same could be said about our Conservative Government. The root cause of all the problems is the lack of investment in vital sewerage and flood resilience infrastructure. Back in early 2021, the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance was set up, to try to prevent the problems witnessed across the county in 2020. They reported back in 2022 with recommendations and proposed that £80m was required to help protect Norfolk. Sadly, the call fell on deaf ears and the government failed to make the full funding available.

At the time it seemed the Conservatives were more concerned with their internal power struggle which led to our local West Norfolk MP Liz Truss crashing the economy. It’s now her constituents in South West Norfolk and neighbouring North West Norfolk, both low-lying areas highly vulnerable to flooding, who must bear the brunt of this failure.

Climate change is the root cause of many of the problems we are now facing. More extreme storms and hotter summers are here to stay and the consequences of these changes will become more severe as the years go by. Yet Conservative-controlled Norfolk remains one of the few local authorities in the country to obstinately refuse to declare a climate emergency despite being repeatedly pushed to do so by the Liberal Democrats at County Hall.

Yet it seems the Conservatives would rather stick their heads in the sand. The government has rowed back on their 2050 net zero ambitions and has now approved licences for new oil drilling around our shores. Fortunately, we all now know this government’s days are numbered. It will be for the next government to tackle the difficult and complex measures required to protect us from future flooding. Let’s hope they rise to the challenge.