New CCTV kit might ease village's flooding

WORKMEN DISCOVER THAT UTILITY COMPANIES SMASHED DRAIN WALLS

- OLIVER PRIDMORE

UTILITY companies smashing through the brick walls of a Victorian drain may have worsened a village’s flooding problems.

Via East Midlands engineers working for Nottinghamshire County Council made the discovery in the Newark village of East Stoke.

The county council has spent £500,000 on a new fleet of tankers and now uses seven vehicles to clean every one of Nottinghamshire’s 140,000 gullies every two years.

Two specialist investigation tankers are now deployed to assess potential blockages or infrastructure issues. And on Monday they discovered that two utility pipes had gone through the wall of a culvert.

Gullies initially take surface water from roads and this is then run through a culvert.

Matt Duckworth, a drainage manager with Via East Midlands, said: “The services that have gone through I think are installed by what they call moleing. Rather than digging a trench and installing, it’s just thrust through like a mole would dig.