For many people today has been dominated by flooding and near-flooding. Homes in Church Road Rawreth avoiding flooding ‘by the skin of their teeth’. The Fairglen Interchange closed because of flooding, with 30 minute journeys out of north Rayleigh taking over 2 hours. A trip from rawreth Lane to Rayleigh High Street and back taking 2 1/2 hours, an ambulance driving the wrong side of the road all the way along Hambro Hill. The car park drainage improvements at Sweyne Park not finished in time, causing plenty of problems and anxiety. Watery Lane predictably closed again, with lots of discussion on BBC Essex about the wisdom of building so many houses near there.
It prompts a few questions such as
Why did the Fairglen Interchange flood?
Why aren’t the car park drainage improvements at Sweyne Park finished?
If the District Council can’t adequately deal with surface water runoff from a park, should residents have any trust in them dealing with the runoff from hundreds of new houses?
Even though times are hard, should our councils be putting a bit more money in their budgets for flood protection equipment?
When was the work in the park carpark supposed to finish? I assume they may have had some delays due to the bad weather, but it is taking quite some time. I notice they have now coned off a section of the road on the bend, taking it down to 1 lane at this point.
Is this work supposed to address the build up of water in the drainage ditch that surrounds the park, because I heard that it was pretty high again yesterday where the ditch enters a pipe under the entrance to the carpark.
It would be nice to see it finished because we now have dog walkers parking on the other side of the bend because they cannot access the carpark.
At last week’s CAC, Cllr Hudson said that Watery lane improvements were linked to the Core Strategy and that no houses would be built in Hullbridge until improvements had been made. That means at least another 15 years wait (as Hullbridge is in the last tranche of houses)and ignores all the extra traffic from the hundreds of houses to be built in the surrounding area. Lets hope climate change brings dry weather!