Discontent at flood meeting

by Diana Hall

THEY came in their hundreds on Monday evening to fill Lewes Town Hall and the Corn Exchange, looking for explanations and reassurance.

Packed into the main hall and spilling into the adjoining Corn Exchange where they listened via a video link-up, more than five hundred residents heard the experts unveil plans for flood defences for the town, and promise them a safer future.

The panel - including Peter Midgley and Rupert Clubb from the Environment Agency, Lewes LibDem MP Norman Baker, district and county council officials and elected councillors, climate change expert and academic Alister Scott, and Jane Milne from The Association of British Insurers (ABI) - faced a barrage of questions.

For three hours speaker after speaker from the floor challenged the panel to give them answers to why deliberations had taken so long, and guarantees that the flood waters, which ruined homes and businesses last October, would never again devastate their lives to that extent.

Time and again they heard the Environment Agency officers quote the 200 to one statistic that the October floods were a freak weather event.

-That exceptional rainfall and swollen rivers, rather than high tides, had inundated their properties.

-That the flooding in Lewes was not the result of flood gates being opened up-stream at Barcombe.

-That flood defences were now back to pre-flood standards, despite the difficulties of getting onto farmland, quarantined by foot and mouth precautions.

-That the government was working with the insurance industry to restore confidence and cover householders and businesses in the flood plains.

But they also heard home-owners repeatedly relating their sad attempts to gain insurance of any kind in the stricken Cliffe area.

They heard of concerns over culverts and drains that still appeared blocked.

They heard from a landlord unable to get insurance cover for his tenants, from families still camping out with relatives, unable to return to flooded homes, unable to settle insurance claims, unable to regain lost business or plan for the future.

People were angry and frustrated, articulate in their bitterness, unconvinced by the rhetoric of what they were being offered.

And they left, lingering in small dissatisfied groups, largely dispirited and cynical. After eleven months of official wrangling, it was all too little, too late.

The town s overwhelming verdict was delivered after the unveiling of five flood defence options, on show all day in a staffed exhibition at the Town Hall, and the highly charged public meeting that was the first phase in the public consultation process.