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A FORMER councillor is demanding Suffolk County Council seeks engineering solutions to overcome repeated flooding on roads around Haverhill.
Colin Jones, a former borough and county councillor, says the recent storms have again highlighted areas which are persistently prone to flooding and action taken to tackle them.
One of the worst hit areas was Haverhill Road at Little Wratting where flood water breached three homes. One home was thought to have been evacuated after eighteen inches of water cam in causing thousands of pounds of damage.
Arran White, landlord of the nearby Rising Sun pub for the last year, said every time there was heavy rain the road became flooded.
After the last time this happened, a couple of weeks ago, a ditch was dug in the field opposite, but this seemed to have filled with water and made things worse.
"Something has got to be done, we are on a hill and we still get flooded. My cellar can flood, but this time me sump pump has worked.
"The footpath has been damaged by the flooding, but there doesn't seem to be anything happening about it. It's a dangerous stretch of road anyway, it is supposed to be 30 mph, but they still do 60 on it.," Mr White said.
Mr Jones said he believed the county highways department should be investigating measures to prevent more floods.
"We all know where these floods occur, so why do they keep occurring. The problem is getting worse and if we can build the channel tunnel we should be able to alleviate problems areas of flooding and surface water on Suffolk roads," Mr Jones said.
Guy Smith, Suffolk County Council highways area manager for Haverhill, said engineering works were already carried out at trouble spots. The ditch at Little Wratting had been blocked and was learned by highways staff two weeks ago, although it was actually the landowners responsibility to do this.
"It is not poor highway management, but badly maintained ditches which cause the problems in most cases,
"We thought what we had done at Little Wratting would be enough to cope for years to come, but it was not.
"We will be looking at it again next week to see what needs to be done. We do look at problem areas, but we have not got the finance or the resources to deal with what might happen," Mr Smith said.