From: Emergency Planning <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 4:11 PM
Subject: Flood Update: 1 February 2024 FAO Ward members, Town and Parish Councils and Flood Wardens - Debrief Survey
To:
Good Afternoon
Please see below the update in relation to the flood risk, response, recovery, debriefs and investigations:
Flood Risk – Environment Agency Update:
This is a positive situation with the Flood Warning in place for Donnington to Clayhill, Shaw area of Newbury being removed yesterday. The river levels are slowly slowly falling but there are responding to rainfall quickly so we are far from out of the woods for this winter.
For river levels please see: Find river, sea, groundwater and rainfall levels - GOV.UK (check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk)
For Flood Warnings please see: West Berkshire - flood alerts and warnings - GOV.UK (check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk)
EA Pumping at Great Shefford continues. I visited the area myself today and noted that on the whole the water is within the roadside ditch channels. There are some areas where there is water on the main highway which we are monitoring but the pumps appear to be doing the job for which they were intended. On a separate but linked note the Environment Agency now have the planning permission to go ahead with the flood alleviation scheme which is intended to alleviate the need for any pumps and give more protection to Great Shefford.
Thames Water:
TW continue to tanker across the area to try to take the pressure of their system. Sadly, this work is likely to have to continue for some months to come and for awareness they were tankering until May in 2014. They do have gangs going out to do clean ups in the area and this will continue. Some of the major clean ups where the areas have been affected by heavy waste material will continue but until the groundwater levels reduce this is again likely to be an ongoing project.
West Berkshire Council:
We have not closed our Emergency Operations Centre for our coordination and moved to a business as usual situation. We are still however continuing to monitor the groundwater situation and indeed the weather forecasts so that we will step it back up and running if needed.
Physical Recovery:
The Council has reopened the majority of the road closures as a result of flooded roads. However, there are a number of road closures in place or being put in place to undertake repairs to roads as a result of the floods. So please do keep an eye out for these closures on our roadworksmap: View Roadworks in West Berkshire - West Berkshire Council
We are also working through a large number of reports in relation to blocked gulleys, road damage etc etc. If you have reported defects already to us then please accept our apologies for the delay, however if you are aware of a defect and have not reported it then please use our online report a fault system to do so: Report a Problem - West Berkshire Council. Again, a plea to not put requests through to individual officers since they can be missed in the many emails we receive or if that person is not available they won’t be actioned.