Littlehampton flooding: Mayor elect calls for urgent action

SussexWorld

Littlehampton councillor, and mayor elect, Sean Lee, has called for urgent action after severe flooding left dozens homeless and their businesses in tatters.

Transcript

00:00 Hi I'm Councillor Lee, I'm a River Ward Councillor. I was actually away at the time of the floods but

00:05 obviously came back here, heard all about it. Here at Arran Yacht Club obviously there's a

00:10 public meeting going on, a public drop-in session and from what I'm hearing there's a lot of concern

00:15 about the lack of warning and the lack of resources from the Environment Agency which is quite

00:22 disturbing because people have said that in years gone by you know there was sandbags available,

00:28 there was warnings issued and a lot of the residents are telling me they didn't get much

00:32 of a warning you know and it was obviously an exceptionally high tide, there's talk of the

00:37 solar eclipse but these events are going to become more frequent and this side of the river does need

00:43 investment, it needs development and it certainly needs help for the local residents who you know

00:50 appear to have been left defenceless in this case. It's an information gathering exercise you know

00:54 the Environment Agency are here, West Sussex is here, Arran's here, obviously we're here from the

00:59 Town Council as well and I think they're listening to the concerns of local residents and businesses

01:06 but you know again there's been a lot of talk for 20 years about what needs to be done or this could

01:11 be done or that could be done and it's definitely a time for action. A lot of them can't get

01:16 insurance now or they're advised not to take out content insurance so a warning system is the least

01:22 I think that we could you know or should be offered to the residents because as one guy was saying to

01:28 me you know if you get a warning then you can take all your electrical stuff and you can take it up

01:32 to your first floor which isn't great because you're still going to lose obviously you know

01:36 stuff on the ground floor but this time around there was no warning and suddenly he you know

01:41 he had 18 inches of water in his house before he knew it. I'm going to be highlighting a lot of

01:47 issues around the river and the sea and the sewage which again is another concern. Fortunately

01:52 because this river water, which sounds ridiculous, there was not as much contamination I believe as

01:58 had it been sea water you know so that's some degree of luck there but yeah bringing issues

02:06 around the river to public attention is one of my main priorities in the year coming.

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