The Place Select Committee of Nottinghamshire County Council will meet next Wednesday (27 March) to discuss the impact of Storm Babet. A major incident was declared on 21 October after four days of persistent rain.
Between 18 and 21 October 2023, 124 mm of rain fell across parts of Nottinghamshire, with 95 mm of this falling in one day alone. “This was the wettest three days since records began and caused drainage systems and watercourses to become overwhelmed,” the council said. “The impacts of the extreme weather resulted in the internal flooding of 1,259 homes and businesses across the county.”
County council staff worked alongside partner organisations including the Environment Agency, district and borough councils and the emergency services to support residents.
Via East Midlands, who manages highways in the county on behalf of the council, closed 77 roads; and 376 calls for support were received. During the course of Storm Babet, the Environment Agency issued 17 flood alerts, 57 flood warnings and two severe flood warnings.
Nottinghamshire County Council is the lead local flood authority in the county, and has undertaken an investigation to outline what happened during the flooding event and whether the relevant risk management authorities, such as the Environment Agency, Severn Trent Water and the county council, have exercised their responsibilities.
Ahead of next week’s Select Committee meeting, Cllr Neil Clarke MBE, the cabinet member for transport and environment, said: “We know that flooding can devastate communities and I have seen first-hand during the aftermath of Storm Babet the awful impacts that this can have on people’s homes and livelihoods.
“It’s important to remember that each community is different, and that flooding cannot always be attributed to just one cause across the whole of a county. In this case, the sheer volume of rainfall in a three-day period saturated land and severely overwhelmed watercourses and drainage systems.
“We hear a lot of feedback that residents feel that highways flooding is down to blocked drains but I’d like to stress that in cases such as this, even the cleanest of drains would not have been able to cope with the volume of water falling and trying to travel into the system.
“In many cases in communities, large open spaces such as playing fields and agricultural land became saturated which caused water to run off the land rather than soak into it. Roads became channels for water to travel along due to the sheer volume of it.
“It’s also important to remember that flooding can also occur due to rivers reaching their capacity and breaching their banks, and in this case it is the Environment Agency who would lead on mitigation.”
He added: “I cannot mention Storm Babet without mentioning the fantastic community response that we saw across Nottinghamshire. I have had the pleasure of meeting and thanking some of our dedicated flood warden volunteers several times over the last few years. Our 18 community flood signage schemes each came into their own last October to protect residents from flooding.
“We know that the publication of the investigation reports will not bring all of the answers that communities may be looking for but we hope that they give some hope when it comes to looking at how we can continue to support them to reduce flooding in the future.
“I’d also like to thank all of the staff across the county council and Via East Midlands who supported residents and communities during the flooding.”
