Come to Shropshire and start giving us flooding help, Tory council leader tells government
Council leaders are ramping up pressure on the government to fund immediate flood prevention measures for communities across Shropshire, after the county was battered by flooding for the third consecutive year.
Lezley Picton, leader of Shropshire Council, said the mental and financial toll the repeated floods were having on residents and businesses could not continue any longer.
While a long-term solution is being worked on by the River Severn Partnership, Councillor Picton said urgent steps needed to be taken to minimise the devastation in the meantime.
She and Telford & Wrekin Council leader Shaun Davies have now set out plans to host a conference with flooding minister Rebecca Pow, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency, to highlight the impact of the latest floods and push for funding.
Councillor Picton said: “We need to keep this in the forefront of people’s minds and we need to get the government to focus on this.
“I want them to come here to understand that we are not just going to sit back and let this happen on an annual basis.
“The cost of the clear-up to the council is obviously secondary to the devastation it causes to the businesses and people’s homes, but it’s not insignificant.
“The council can’t afford to be spending three quarters of a million pounds every year on flood clean-up.
“The River Severn Partnership is doing some sterling work looking at long-term solutions, but we need some short-term solutions as well.
“We know the major solutions are way upstream, creating wetlands and better management of the dams.
“The River Severn Partnership is looking at masses of tree planting, but that’s 30 years away.
“What we are hoping is that the government will come up here, with Defra, with the Environment Agency, to look at what can be done in the short and medium term. This isn’t just about waiting for trees to grow.”
Councillor Picton said there would not be a one-size-fits-all answer for every community.
For example some businesses in Longden Coleham in Shrewsbury have already benefitted from door blocks and pumps since the catastrophic 2020 flooding, while a home in Melverley, an area which floods every year, has had a flood wall built around it.
And in some areas like Ironbridge, where the water came close to breaching the temporary flood barriers last month, Councillor Picton said having permanent defences constructed might be an option.
“It’s about finding those bespoke solutions,” she said.
“The solution that might suit Ironbridge isn’t going to suit Bridgnorth and isn’t going to suit Shrewsbury.”
Councillor Picton urged anyone affected by last month’s floods to contact their respective council and have their property recorded, to help show the true scale of the problem and bolster the case for why urgent action is needed.
She said: “We heard of properties this time that haven’t flooded before that have flooded for the first time, and we want to get that data.
“The council learned from the floods in 2020 and we will learn from these, because there are still things that I have discovered that we need to improve on.”
