NORTHWICH’S drainage is system is simply not fit for purpose and should be replaced.

That is the message from Cllr Sam Naylor, the town centre’s representative on Cheshire West and Chester Council.

Storm Christoph battered the town with heavy rain, and while the flood defences held up to prevent the rivers bursting their banks in the town centre, the grids simply could not cope with the surface water.

Cllr Naylor had already warned about the problem just one week earlier, when downpours led to some surface flooding in London Road, but this week’s events were even bigger than the flooding of autumn 2019.

He told the Guardian: “It’s de ja vu. It’s October 2019 again – but worse. The water volume was a lot greater than October 2019.

“The flood defences did what they were supposed to do, the £7 million investment has proven to be a really good one, but we have been hit hard on two occasions since by a drainage system that is not fit for purpose.

Northwich Guardian:

Water pumped from Waitrose car park. Image: Matt Sayle

"It's probably a 19th century drainage system. Some are owned by CWAC, some by United Utilities, but clearly when the river rises or we get really significant rain – the flood defences protect the town but the drains don't.

"God knows what the town would have looked like if the flood defences were not in place."

Cllr Naylor spent much of Thursday working with CWAC officers, the Environment Agency and Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service to resolve the issue at Weaver Court – where around 50 residents had to be evacuated after being isolated by floods without power.

He is eager for that situation not to be repeated – but he believes it will be a costly fix.

Cllr Naylor said: “It is going to take a big sum of money to fix the problem. Where are we going to find what is probably going to be a few million pound?

“It’s got to come down to central Government. If Mr Johnson is serious about ‘building back better’ and ‘levelling up’ the north, let’s see what investment we can get for replacing an inadequate drainage system.”

Mike Amesbury, Labour MP for Weaver Vale, also visited Northwich on Thursday to see the devastation caused by the floods.

He added: “We had a similar situation with flooding in this area just over a year ago and many people are rightly asking how this has happened again.

"Going forward, there must be an urgent investigation, but also action, to ensure this does not happen again in the future."

Environment Secretary George Eustice told the Local Democracy Reporting Service on Friday that the Government is considering changing the funding formula in favour of northern infrastructure projects.

READ > 'Northwich flood defences did work' says Environment Secretary George Eustice

He said: “One of the things we are certainly looking at is, with that additional capital money — some £5.2 billion — is putting in an additional weighting for frequently flooded communities.

“So the communities that don’t just get flooded once in every 15 or 20 years, those that get flooded sometimes three or four times in a decade, we want them to be able to get access to more funds to improve the schemes in those towns.”