The county’s road drains and gullies aren’t fit for purpose and must be properly maintained if they are to protect residents from flooding, officials have warned.
Members of Lincolnshire County Council’s (LCC) highways and transport scrutiny committee were told that the authority was developing a plan to repair and clean out gullies and drainage systems in a bid to reduce flooding on roads, writes Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle.
But some councillors raised concerns that drains are being missed and some flooding issues are being ignored.
At a meeting on Monday, (April 27) Coun Kevin Clarke said: “I understand that the council’s doing a plan of our assets, but that’s no good for when you tell the resident that ‘oh, the gully outside your house – that’s alright, we don’t know where the pipe goes – sorry your house has got flooding’.
“This has happened time and time again. I know you say we work together, but sorry, I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of that.”
Coun Clarke went on to criticise the council’s response rate to some incidents of flooding.
He added: “Residents say they ring up and the reply they get is ‘past records show our equipment is working alright – back in contact with you in 14 days’.
“Well when water’s coming over the path and coming up to the entrance, coming back in 14 days really isn’t good enough.”
Spalding member Coun Ingrid Sheard (pictured) agreed and added that some residents don’t feel listened to when they report incidents of flooding.
She said: “One thing that is constantly being reported to myself is after strongly encouraging people to report on FixMyStreet, they’re getting messages back saying people have been out and investigated, despite them sending photos.
“A lot of residents have been on the verge of water coming into their properties, so they’ve been in really quite scary situations.
“But then by the time it is investigated they get a message back to say ‘no, sorry this isn’t a priority’.’
“I just wonder whether perhaps that message needs re-looking at because I don’t feel that’s giving out a correct message to them. It’s actually making them feel a little bit ignored.”
Shaun Butcher, head of highways assets at LCC, said: “Like all drainage activities, there are times where we’d like to do things but if we have emergencies, crews might be diverted to somewhere that’s actually flooding, rather than the planned works that we’d like to do.
“It’s not what we’d want to be doing. But I think we’ve increased the amount of jetters on the contract, so we’ve got more coming in and hopefully that will give us better flexibility when we have these issues in the future.”
Mr Butcher went on to say that the county council is reforming the way it responds to issues from residents.
He added: “We do need to use that information and one of the things we have been able to do as part of this extra budget is to put more resources into that investigation into those complaints that residents are putting in.”
Highways bosses say they allocated £800,000 towards tackling flooding hotspots, £50,000 toward fixing jammed ironwork and £200,000 towards grip cutting (small drainage channels) for this financial year.
Officials have also allocated £50,000 towards maintaining drainage systems and a further £50,000 towards its routine and rotating programme of cleaning drains, gullies, or street surfaces for the 2026-27 financial year.
Highways chiefs have also allocated £925,000 towards improving minor drainage schemes for this financial year.
They said the authority is working with water companies, Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs) and National Highways to address drainage and flooding issues.
