Wiltshire Council’s drainage team is still collecting information on the recent flooding caused by Storm Babet. This information is important as it influences how county and local flood plans are assessed, AND influences the amount of emergency funding Wiltshire Council can apply for, which could directly benefit individual property owners.
Please read the paraphrased information below from Wiltshire Council, and send all correspondence to the clerk at Lydiard Tregoze, so that we may collate. clerk@lydiardtregoze-pc.org.uk
Thank you.
From Wiltshire Council:
Thank you for the flooding information you have passed to us to date, we do appreciate the work involved.
Having had 2 storms back-to-back has culminated in a large number of reports coming into the Drainage Team, we wanted to reassure you all that we will be visiting you, however it will take time to get round everyone.
Mapping data
In the meantime, we will be sending AO maps to your Parish/Town clerk and ask that you mark them up with flooding details to assist:
- Houses/Businesses that flooded internally, names and addresses
- Near misses
- Blocked drains & gullies
- Flow of water, estimated depth, direction, cause of flow e.g. run of from field if known
- Roads flooded
- Ditches that may have contributed, or requiring maintenance
- We also need information on people or business that have had to move off their property due to the flooding, and if you know where they are going to.
Flood Recovery Framework
We can see that Wiltshire has now formally reported over 50 internally flooded properties as a result of Storm Babet. Due to the number of properties affected Wiltshire Council is applying for funding assistance and may be able to access Flood Recovery Framework Fund. This may enable property owners that have flooded, to claim up to £5,000 to assist with installing measures to improve the resilience/resistance of the property whilst undergoing repairs, such as installing a flood door, French drains or purchasing flood barriers. Residents may also be able to club together to enable an improvement scheme to protect their combined properties, although professional advice should be sought on this.
In order to confirm that you are now eligible to access funding available via schemes in the Flood Recovery Framework could you please:
- Confirm that the properties reported have been verified and were flooded as a direct result of Storm Babet
- Confirm the dates of the impacts you have reported
- If these are outside of the 19th – 25th October dates, an explanation and evidence that these can still be directly attributed to Storm Babet
We understand that time is of the essence, once we have this information we’ll consider this against the eligibility criteria for the scheme and let you know the outcome quickly.
Recording property flooding
It is often found owners do not like to report their property has flooded internally, for various reasons including their insurance company finding out and their property might be devalued.
We would suggest you advise them of the following which may assist in them reporting that flooding occurred:
- When you purchase/sell a property one of the questions your solicitor will ask of the vendor is whether the property has ever flooded internally or any of the land/garden. If the owner indicates that this has never happened and it later comes to light that it did flood internally the penalties will be severe as the courts take a dim view of this type of dishonesty which has resulted in the vendor having to pay back up to the value of the property to the new owner and in some cases additional compensation.
- With regard to insurance the government has set up Flood Re for homeowners whose properties have flooded or are at risk of flooding. The scheme is designed to enable homeowners to insure their properties at a more reasonable cost than would otherwise be charged.
- When people sell properties that have been flooded and they do, they can say:
- The local council has carried out works to reduce the flood risk by…….
- The steps taken to make their property more resilient
Further advice
Where insurance companies are involved it also a good idea to ask if they can “build back better” installing a flood door rather than a normal door, raising electrical sockets, replacing vulnerable flooring with tiles.
Access to the fund will also enable homes and business to claim rate relief. Below are some websites that you can pass onto your community that contain information and advice, in particular to anyone who has flooded.
https://nationalfloodforum.org.uk/- national charity lots of advice and information
https://bluepages.org.uk/ – independent flood directory of companies involved in resilience and repair
https://www.property-care.org/home
https://floodmary.com/ – advice and information of resilience & recovery
Once again thank you for your assistance in collating this information.
