Council pledges extra £500k for gully cleansing and roadside drainage repairs
Buckinghamshire Council has pledged an additional £500,000 for repeat gully cleansing and repairing roadside drainage as part of a programme to ensure the county is as protected as possible against heavy rainfall and potential flooding.
The funding is on top of the £110m committed over four years from the council’s budget to tackle highways repairs, with extra focus being given to a number of high priority areas.
With the highest rainfall for more than 200 years throughout winter and spring, in recent months many areas within Buckinghamshire have experienced flooding and related problems. To bolster resilience to flooding and heavy rain, the council will use the new funding to carry out extra cleansing of high priority gullies that need it in addition to its regular planned gully maintenance, to ensure they are in prime condition to cope with periods of sudden heavy or prolonged rainfall. New ditches and 'grips' to remove water from the road will also be created in some problem areas, and damaged drainage systems will be repaired so that water can flow away more easily.
Peter Martin, Deputy Cabinet Member for Transport said: “As we know, it has been a very wet winter and the excessive amounts of rain have caused issues for many of our communities as drainage systems struggled to deal with volumes of water rarely seen in Buckinghamshire. While dealing with sewers and mains water pipes remains the responsibility of water companies, as a council we need to ensure that roads are clear of standing water wherever possible. Clearing gullies and ditches of leaves and debris and making repairs where needed allows the water to drain away more quickly and helps to prevent some flooding.”
For the past four years, the council has allocated funding to clean all 85,000 gullies across the county as part of a regular cycle. Gullies are an important part of the highway drainage system that minimise flood damage. This will be the fourth year of clearing out the gullies and making repairs where necessary, helping the gullies to work at their best, protecting property and minimising the damage to highways caused by runoff from roads.
Peter added: “We will be visiting every highway gully across our roads network and cleaning and making repairs as needed – residents can help by paying attention to any signs put up on their road to give advance notice of gully cleansing and making sure that vehicles are moved so as not to block our crews from getting access to gullies. By taking this additional action now we hope we can better prepare ourselves for the future.”