The AA Writes About Watery Lane – While The County Council Website Says “assessed as requiring no further action at this time”

February

8

4 comments

The AA write about Watery Lane on their own blog here.

We are urging drivers to heed road closure signs on a flooded road in Hullbridge, Essex, called… Watery Lane.
In the last six days, we have attended 14 cars, including two this morning, that have come to grief after ignoring the warning signs.
Local AA patrol and flood rescue team member Allen Childs says: “The clue’s in the name, Watery Lane. It’s closed for safety reasons but unfortunately some drivers think they know better and have got stuck, even though they see other cars in trouble.
“The road is a popular short cut and some have admitted they were just blindly following their sat-nav….”

Meanwhile, the County Council website has the following on its ‘view a problem’ page:

Watery Lane is shown to have a ‘drainage problem’ (that’s true!!!!) and the response is “No Further Action” !

The text below explains that “No Further Action” can mean an amazingly different number of things:

No further action

This has been assessed as requiring no further action at this time. Reasons can include:

We have assessed the reported problem and it does not currently meet our minimum assessment criteria for action. We routinely inspect all routes and this issue will be monitored as part of these inspections.
The area of concern is the responsibility of another organisation, local council, or land owner. We will contact them and ask that they report directly to you, if you have provided us with contact details.
On visiting the site, the Highways Inspector has removed the hazard or the hazard had already been removed before the site was visited, so no problem was found or identified.
We have previously been made aware of the problem and are already preparing to take the necessary action as part of a large maintenance scheme.
A routine inspection is due shortly and any problems present will be identified at that time.

We just hope that what they mean is that there is going to be ‘a large maintenance scheme’.

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  • Hullbridge Parish Council meeting Tomorrow at 7.30pm. Anyone grom Hullbridge or Rawreth who wants to talk about this is very welcome. I think we are going to need as many people as possible on board to get something done about this.

  • Last Thursday I was chatting with the 3 people sent by the council to inspect Watery Lane. At the time, the water had receeded to about 10 inches deep. Their view was that the Farmers should dig ditches into their land to stop the water and silt running off the fields and blocking the road drains. Otherwise, every time we get significant rainfall, a drain jetting rig will be required to clear the silt. The Farmers probably dont want to lose a 12 foot wide strip of crop growing land, so this isn’t likely to be a solution.
    I took a drive through there last night to see what the water levels are like. It was about 18 inches deep in the worst places, with the ditch which goes under the road at the Hullbridge end just short of overflowing onto the road again.

  • Watery lane is in a deep cutting therefore it will fill up with water ! Any ditch dug alongside would have to be in excess of 10 feet deep to be effective .It is an exceptional year with the soil at capacity so any rain will just run off the top .The silt that is blocking the drains is of a coarse nature and has come from the banks washed off by vehicles bow waves ignoring the closed signs . The occurrence of flooding is increasing probably because of the failure of drainage systems in recent developements along Rawreth Lane .This will only get worse as Hullbridge is expanded alongside Watery Lane .

  • As A.Matthews said, this is an exceptional year for rain, but every year since at least 2009, Watery lane has flooded. If memory serves, 2010 was so deep that the water was over the bonnet on my Land Rover (4 feet depth). This year hasn’t been anywhere near as deep, but has lasted much longer.

    If no one wants to fix it, then maybe Watery Lane should be reclassified as a seasonal Ford, complete with depth markers. This way, people could use their own judgement, and dare I say ‘common sense’ before driving down a road that essentially runs along a river bed, which could be full of water.

    One lady that I recovered from Watery Lane said that she saw the ‘flood’ signs, but didn’t think it would be that deep. She wasn’t the only one!

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