No maintenance to blame

LACK of maintenance on water courses in Nottinghamshire have caused serious and repeated flooding for farms and other rural businesses.

Alan Blogg runs the Trent Valley Equestrian Centre whose competition yard and riding school have stabling for 100 horses and 200 acres of grazing. “Since June 15 we have been under water on four occasions and have lost all our barn-stored hay and straw. On the fourth occasion our house was flooded as well.

“We believe that if the local water courses were maintained by the Environment Agency we would not be in this situation. The ditches and dykes are only operating at 50 to 60 per cent capacity.”

Each time the land and property has flooded the Environment Agency has not placed the river on flood alert until two days afterwards, he said.

Mr Blogg held a meeting with neighbouring farmers and landowners and a representative of the Environment Agency to discuss the situation. “He came and met us and agreed entirely with us, but has since passed it on to people higher up the chain.

“The response we are getting is that we are at the bottom of the list because we are a low population, rural area. I am paying £2,000 drainage rates per year and I don’t feel like I am getting anything for it. I told them that I could get a digger in and organise the work myself but I was told that they needed to do an environmental study before any work could be done.”