The flooding of homes and businesses shouldn’t be something that we have to put up with in 2023. Unfortunately, for some of our neighbours it has become an annual fear.

The junction of London Road with Shelburne Street and All Saints Road is particularly badly affected as are the businesses and homes in that area. A couple of years ago I presented a petition raised by local people to the Scrutiny Committee at the council and action was promised. Some progress has been made but more needs to be done.

When incidents like this occur Severn Trent Water will routinely put a camera down their manholes to see whether there is any debris that is causing the problem. I am calling on Severn Trent to publish that CCTV so that we can see that it is not their main sewers that are the cause.

Likewise we should not expect sewerage to be dumped in the River Trent in 2023. We are still relying on the Victorian solution of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) to take flood water into our rivers and seas at times of heavy rainfall.

Inevitably, some foul sewerage joins with the flood waters thereby polluting our River Trent. As far as I can tell there are 4 CSOs in our ward and another 40 or so upstream that affect the water quality of the Trent in Stoke. In 2020 our four local CSOs overflowed for a total of nearly 113 hours on 128 separate occasions. This needs investment to bring these systems up to date.

I shall be raising these issues with their Community Engagement Manager and others who I hope can answer these serious questions