Residents feel 'ignored' after their homes are flooded three times

Families waited nine months to move back into their flooded flats - but as they were packing, it happened again. Ellie Gosley spoke to home-owners whose ground-floor flats have flooded three times in 13 years

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AT A block of flats in Bridgend 10 ground-floor properties are in ruins.

The carpets and flooring have been ripped up, kitchen units have been pulled out, and there are no personal belongings left behind.

After being flooded out of their homes in September 2024 the residents of these flats were packing up any belongings they did manage to save ready to move back in during mid-June, when water poured into the flats once more. Now they are back to square one.

Although devastated, none of them is surprised. They have been warning those in authority that they are at risk for years. They say nobody is listening.

Every time it rains they worry about a culvert which sits at the back of the property underneath a railway line.

They believe that it has been the cause of the three floods - in 2012, 2024, and 2025 - that have occurred since residents moved in after the flats were built in the mid-2000s.

"We've just been left," says 66-year-old Kim Fjaelberg, who has lived at Caer Castell House in Brackla since around 2007. She lived at the flat with her husband, who died in 2008, but Kim says all memories of the flat have now been ruined because of trauma. She just wants out.

Since September she has been staying with different friends and is now paying £800 a month for an Airbnb. "I haven't got a home anymore," she says.

Rhys Woosnam, 43, has lived at Caer Castell House since 2010 and been through all three devastating incidents. He says the repeated flooding has caused him to lose everything.

Rhys, who woke up to two to three feet of water in his flat last September, says: "It's an absolutely horrendous situation. We've been raising these concerns for over a decade and feel as though we've been neglected.