THIS time last week, Northwich residents and business owners woke up to the most devastating floods seen for decades.

Storm Christoph deluged the town with heavy rain – and a brief but thick flurry of snow – leaving disruption and destruction in its wake.

In the week since, the community has rallied together to support residents forced to leave their homes and business owners whose premises were ruined.

Now, two of the Cheshire West and Chester Council members whose wards were badly affected by the storm have issued a joint statement calling for action to prevent another repeat of the floods.

The statement has been penned by Cllr Sam Naylor, whose Witton ward includes the town centre, and Cllr Andrew Cooper, whose Leftwich ward includes London Road.

The councillors' statement in full

It says: “Last week, for the second time in successive winters, Northwich town centre suffered significant and widespread flooding causing property damage, and severely affecting lives and livelihoods in the town.

“Before getting into the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’, it is appropriate to take a moment to thank all those people who worked tirelessly in the lead up, during and aftermath of the storm. 

Northwich Guardian:

Roads had to be closed following the storm. Image: Matt Sayle

“Between us we were on the scene for nearly three straight days and witnessed first-hand the hundreds of people, both seen and unseen, delivering sandbags, organising evacuations, operating pumps, cleaning up, and so much more.

“It has also been overwhelming to see our fantastic community rally round, offering people places to stay, volunteering their time, donating money to get businesses back on their feet, and acting with a level of generosity that makes this town so special.

“Clearly the weather last week was extreme with flooding across the region. However, we know that climate change is making extreme weather more likely and with more house building reducing our flood plain capacity, we must assume that events like this will become more frequent.

“This is now the second successive winter that United Utilities sewerage and pumping network have been pushed beyond their design capacity in the town centre.

“This system, which is fundamentally the same combined sewerage system that’s been in place for decades, now needs urgent investment to make sure that this cannot happen again.

“People are tired of what they see as a failure of responsibility in our fragmented public estate. It’s time for our local and national governments, United Utilities, The Environment Agency and The Canals and Rivers Trust to get together and sort this out for Northwich.

“All parties must come together and work rapidly to produce proposals for the improvements that need to be made – whether that’s replacing the combined system, eliminating pinch-points, increasing pumping capacity or anything else that will prevent a reoccurrence.

Northwich Guardian:

London Road was left under water last Thursday. Image: Matt Sayle

“We should be under no illusions that this will be very expensive.  We will need funding from national government to put this right and clearly successive governments have been historically poor in investing in unglamorous infrastructure such as this.

“We must also accelerate major tree planting schemes like the Dane Valley Urban Forest to combat climate change and reduce the speed of run-off into the Dane.

“We cannot afford to see a repeat of the scenes of last week, and we will keep challenging on behalf of the people of Northwich until this is resolved.”

What United Utilities says

The water firm says it had checked its assets were working at an optimal level ahead of last week’s storm and that during Chistoph all of its critical pumping stations operated as designed, working at full capacity.

A spokesman for United Utilities said: “We agree that it is critical that the mechanism of flooding in Northwich is fully understood so that a plan of action can be developed to begin to tackle the issue.

“Rivers, drains and sewers are all interconnected and the answer to Northwich’s flooding problem must be a joined-up approach with all the risk management authorities.

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“We await the publication of the council’s Section 19 report from October 2019 and we are committed to working alongside all the agencies.”

CWAC released an interim report looking at the causes of the October 2019 flooding last year, along with recommendations for how a repeat of the flooding could be avoided.

The council announced earlier this month that the full report – known as the Section 19 report – will be released this spring.