South Cotswolds MP invites locals to share flooding stories
Roz Savage says she is looking for top-down and bottom-up approaches
The MP for the South Cotswolds is hosting a flooding and water summit in a town just north of Swindon today.
Residents are invited to share their experiences and gather ideas for solutions at Cricklade Town Hall from 11am.
Roz Savage MP has been working with locals to tackle flooding issues and has raised the topic repeatedly in Westminster.
She said: “We've been getting so many letters from constituents who are just at the end of their tethers about the flooding problems that we seem to have every winter. These rainfall events that were meant to be once in 100 years or once a decade seem to be happening a lot more often than that.
“And it's just heartbreaking to hear these stories. Like the poor lady who had literally just put the finishing touches to her home after it's been flooded last winter. The very next day she got flooded again.
“Or another poor lady who is so stressed about this constant threat of flooding, she's actually lost her hair through the anxiety of it all”.
There are multiple reasons why the South Cotswolds are strongly affected by heavy rainfalls, such as the clay soils in the area which do not absorb water.
Roz Savage also listed the rising number of housing developments and the M4, which created a “bowl effect”, as causes for the increasing number of flooding occurrences.
“These are difficult problems. You know, if they were easy, they would have been solved by now. We know that with climate change, we're getting more extreme downfalls, more intense downfalls, more rain falling all at once with just not enough time for it to seep away.
“But when we come together as communities, it does give us a fighting chance of doing something about this. So, I think people are relieved to actually see somebody taking some leadership on this step you up and doing something”.
Involving local people, to her, also means receiving local input from those who have seen the area change over the years.
“I suppose what we're trying to do is to get that grass roots action to send out working parties. To make sure that each community has got a flood warden. To make sure that that flood warden is given an appropriate heads up when there's some extreme weather coming so that we can get people out there with sandbags to set up flood defences.
“There's so much that can be done locally and it doesn't have to cost a lot and we need to create more resilience, really, at community level and that resilience comes from having a plan, having communications and having strong relationships within the community so that people are willing to work together to save their communities from flooding”.
A second flooding summit will take place on the Gloucestershire side of the South Cotswolds next Saturday (8 March) from 11am at the Cirencester Growth Hub.