Burscough Better Together?

Don't you believe it!

QLocal attended a flooding meeting called by United Utilities at Briars Hall last Tuesday and is pleased to post these two conflicting views of its outcome which make fascinating reading...

First, from a spokesperson for United Utilities who said: "It was a very positive meeting, held in partnership with Lancashire County Council as the Lead Local Flood Authority and Highway’s Authority giving us the opportunity to speak with the local community about the site investigation work we are all carrying out.

“The root cause of flooding can be extremely complex and this is why we are committed to working with all agencies involved to understand the specifics of flooding such as where it comes from, how it behaves and the interactions across each authorities’ assets.

"This will help to minimise the risk of flooding in the area. We will continue to engage with the community so they know what is happening.”

And from a spokesman for the Burscough Flooding Group: "The meeting was a farce - and did not turn out to be a good PR exercise for United Utilities, Lancashire County Council or West Lancashire Borough Council.

"It would have been helpful to have had a microphone, schedule of the speakers with their titles and companies in some kind of running order, the power point presentation was poor, with the meeting going on for three hours.

"A bottle of water for the audience would have been a caring gesture, too.

"To have spent a lot of time talking to an adult audience as if they were school children about the 3 P's pee, poo and paper was demeaning in the tone that it was put across.

"At no time was any sympathy shown to members of the public who have suffered considerable damage to their properties, nor any promise that this won't continue to happen due to the overloaded system even with the minor improvements made.

"UU and WLBC are on record ten years ago advising that the system was already operating at or above capacity and a large amount of money needed to be spent upgrading the sewers in Burscough before major development could take place.

"Yet, here we are with approaching one thousand new homes either built or underway and no major sewer works planned, fair enough SUDS systems will be used to hold back the flow but the pipework is already surcharged and will then have to cope with the attenuated extra flow going into the system!

"Everyone hopes that the engineers have got their calculations right or the whole area will be blighted and property prices will crash."