Flooded Peterborough residents call on authorities to so more to prevent future risk

On Friday (July 9), Peterborough was hit by extreme rainfall, which Anglian Water has since described as a one in a 70 year event.

This left many homes as businesses in the city dealing with the effects of water damage.

Among the residential areas to be badly hit was Lea Gardens, just off Thorpe Road close to the city centre.

A small corner of properties on the street had water into the houses.

A video posted online showed elderly residents having to be helped from their homes.

One resident who experienced this, said: “When we moved into the area flooding was not something that was really flagged as a major issue to us.

“The flood risk was listed because we are around 300m from a river but to our knowledge, the property had never actually flooded before.

“The worst we had experienced was a small area of our garden being flooded on occasion because of poor drainage at a nearby car park.

“As fate would have it, I was going to call Anglian Water about it on Saturday.

“We saw the water getting closer but it didn’t actually flow right up to the door. The problem came from the water coming through the floor to about carpet level, ruining all of the carpets and furniture.

“We’ve been told that we are covered by our insurance but we don’t want anything like this to happen again.

“There is a sewage pump nearby and we don’t know if that was working properly but we think there needs to be some kind of upgrade. We can get all of the damage fixed but it’s just at risk again unless something is done.”

A spokesperson for Anglian Water added: We can confirm that all of the sewer network in the area was working as it should.

“Unfortunately the sheer volume of rain that fell in such a short amount of time; it was approximately a month’s worth of rain which fell in just three hours, was the cause of the flooding that residents experienced.

“Flooding is often an extremely complex issue with many different owners for the drainage network such as Highways, local councils and even private owners, as well as ourselves.

“When we have periods of intense rainfall, it can cause standing water to build up on hard surfaces because it can’t drain away fast enough. Surface water flooding like this, is a bit like a bath plughole and it takes time for the water to drain away.

“We have been working closely with the local council during the last year and have carried out extensive investigations and cleaning throughout our sewers in the area to ensure they are working as they should.”