The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
As I am sure you are aware things totally escalated last Thursday requiring residents of Battlefields Lane South to sandbag their homes and tankers were deployed to help remove the water.
I genuinely believe this is a catalogue of errors by the authorities.
I have lived in this house for 21 years, my neighbours have lived in their home for 50 years.
I do not believe that the rainfall last week was any worse than many winters we have had or previous years that would have caused my sewers to flood my property and neither do they.
In all of our years on Battlefields Lane neither of our homes have ever had the sewers overflow and cover our drives.
The only thing that has changed is the volume of houses that are now sharing our mains services, the new development just off Battlefields Lane being completed earlier in the year and increasing the strain on the ageing infrastructure.
“We have been advised that the pumping station was broken and had not been working despite Anglian Water reporting that it was – I have requested a full written explanation of this.
On Thursday – I cannot fault the actual council workers who came to the street to help the residents, they worked extremely hard.
However, what I have found truly disgusting is how the local council can promote what a wonderful idea the portable toilets were gaining publicity on the radio and via social media.
The reality of their idea is that they delivered six portable toilets along a street that was covered in sewer water, it wasn’t a round the clock operation to help us and at no point did any Anglian Water staff come to assist.
By 6pm we were pretty much left to our own devices, the fire brigade were further up the street helping those who were close to internal flooding.
At my end of the street a council tenant had been given a water pump to keep his property safe, my neighbours are in their 70s – they were expected to not use their own toilets but to come out in the dark, walk through sewer water flooding to cross the street in pitch black conditions to go to a toilet in a neighbour’s garden.
Whoever thought it was a great idea wasted the taxpayers’ money!
The street lights go off at 12am – anyone who needed to go to the toilet was encouraged to use a torch and wear appropriate footwear – absolutely shocking.
What we really wanted is for tankers to work through the night to clear the sewers so we could use our own – but that didn’t happen.
At 7.30pm my neighbours’ grandson came to make sure they were ok, when he saw how close to flooding they were he contacted Doubledays (as he works in their sales team) to see if they would allow him to use a tractor and bowser to help his family.
Doubledays were fabulous and gave him permission to use, when he began to clear the storm drain it was full of cans, debris and blocked, he took two full loads away from the drain outside their house and then managed to pump their flood water away working until almost 11pm after doing a full day’s work himself, both of our drives had cleared of surface water by the morning.
I have requested from Anglian Water who has responsibility in an attempt to find out when this was last cleared.
Anglian Water has still not been to our properties despite talking to them every day and telling them we want them to come and clear the sewer, they did advise they were still tankering from the area and it would clear slowly.
We have been unable to bathe, wash our clothes or use anything that would drain water until today as each time the water entered the pipes it would simply overflow.
I believe that over development by council, lack of investment in new infrastructure of pipes and poor maintenance is the cause of this event.
I also think it’s disgusting that we were left to fend for ourselves outside of office hours when we clearly proved that if they had sent more tankers to take the pressure away that it could have been cleared much earlier.
I know papers have been covering how wonderful the authorities were in reacting to the floods and how the rainwater in Holbeach was the cause, but those who live here have a very different opinion!
Ann Kidd
Battlefields Lane South Holbeach
