22 hours Ago By Euan Duncan and Local Democracy Reporter
Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to Luton Today, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you. A summit involving the local authority and several partner organisations has been held this year, with a second one planned, after the impact of Storm Henk in January and further devastating floods in September. There were up to 14cms of rainfall in places during the most recent flooding, while 90 flood-related issues were reported to the council at the beginning of the year and another 28 problems after a single storm in February.
Advertisement Advertisement A motion proposed by Liberal Democrat Leighton Linslade South councillor Chris Leaman was presented to a full CBC meeting where he said many residents he spoke to “weren’t back in their homes and may not be for some time”. He heard from someone “born in a house affected by flooding, whose parents have been living there for 50 years and whose father (in his eighties) described it as the saddest he’s ever been in his life”. Residents want to talk to agencies in their local communities to understand what might be going wrong, what they need to do differently next time and find out how they can get involved, according to councillor Leaman.
“They want to be on the council’s side,” he explained. “They want to be writing to ministers and lobbying for their community. A number of lessons we learnt from last winter are probably most relevant to the flooding we’ve seen here.
Advertisement Advertisement “These are problems which are likely to happen again, given the impact of climate change. I welcome the flooding summit. But they want to hear the results of those gatherings, and a dialogue coming back to them around what’s going on in their local area and the challenges we face.
” Liberal Democrat Leighton Linslade South councillor Emma Holland-Lindsay said: “We need to ramp up the urgency on this, as we’ve been supporting residents affected by flooding this entire year. “There were three flooding events in January locally and we haven’t seen the report published. Our residents are wondering what’s happening.
Flooding summits held behind closed doors don’t leave much room for us to influence on behalf of those residents. “If we don’t tackle flood prevention, more evacuations will be necessary than during the recent flooding. I think our residents deserve to ask questions, challenge and have a public forum where concerns can be raised.
” Advertisement Advertisement Council leader and Independent Potton councillor Adam Zerny added: “We’ll continue to push in every way we can with these agencies and ensure there’s the dialogue requested.” The motion called on the council to express sympathy to residents and businesses affected by September’s floods, while urging that the Section 19 reports into last winter’s floods be published with any resulting actions, as soon as possible. It wants the agencies involved in the flooding summit to present their findings around the worst affected areas locally to a public forum.
And it asks CBC to commit to holding a flooding summit with partner agencies at least once a year. The motion was referred to the executive..
