00:00At the moment, I'm controlling the amount of water to go into the second manhole by a brick.
00:06It may not be the most elegant solution, but this brick is all that's stopping the flooding
00:12that Clive Lewis has lived in fear of for nearly 25 years.
00:18If the brick is removed or the weather turns to rain,
00:23Church Street here in Luce overflows with water.
00:27And then it all starts tipping out down the road.
00:30Putting nearby houses at risk.
00:32Indeed, we did put sandbags along the front wall in an attempt to stop any damp getting into the walls.
00:39There is the danger in the winter when it's overflowing that it can ice over
00:43and people have fallen on the ice, bicyclists, cyclists have fallen.
00:47Local councillor Bob Ford has been trying to get the issue sorted since he was elected last year.
00:54My constituents up in the gallery should not have to live like this.
01:02Now he's put the issue to Kent County Council's Flood Management Committee.
01:07What I remember was £12,000 to sort this situation.
01:11And as I said to the drainage woman, it's been 25 years.
01:15You put £1,000 away each year, then you'd have been able to do this double.
01:20Council officers at the authority appear open to tackling the problem.
01:25I think you'll recall we had a number of solutions that had been looked at.
01:29But even as residents left the meeting with the prospect of further discussions about their drainage woes on the cards,
01:38any hope of a short-term fix appears to be a washout.
01:42Oli Lieder is loose.
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