The Environment Agency’s Organised Walk along Barkby Brook

On Friday 7th June, a group of representatives from the Environment Agency (EA), Leicestershire County Council (LCC), Charnwood Borough Council (CBC), Syston Town Council (STC), Syston Flood Wardens and Syston Community Flood Group (SCFG), met on Barkby Road near the entrance to the public footpath that runs between the Exton and Blackfriars estates. See our photograph above.
The walk began by looking at the Sustainable Drainage System (SuDs) behind Blackfriars, which is designed to direct water along the stones and out to the Barkby Brook, with the green area acting as a soak away.
Although it looks as if it is working as designed CBC are going to find out who is responsible for maintaining it.
The stretch of land that includes the footpath from Barkby road between the Blackfriar’s and Exton/Whissendene estates which hasn’t been maintained was acknowledged by the CBC representative that it hadn’t been on their maintenance schedule but it would be added now, they apologised for this error on their part.
As the party walked along this footpath to where the entrance from Whissendene should be, it is currently closed off due to the bridge being repaired.
There was a lot of interest into why no water was in the man-made gully, that should take the run off water from the Empingham Way estate and Whissendene before making its way into a balancing pond, behind Ruskin Ave/St Hilda’s which is supposed to collect the run off water from the estates.
Once they arrived at the balancing pond which is very overgrown and with very little water being held in it.
This pond was installed to hold water back to prevent Syston from flooding.
When arriving at the Barkby Brook two outlets were found to have been vandalised, and the metal closures were not there, see image below, this would mean any water going into the SuDs, or the balancing pond would not be slowly released into the Barkby Brook, it would just flow unrestricted.
The agencies again said they would investigate these and repairs would be made.
At the same place a large tree is laying in the brook causing a blockage, see image below.
The party moved on to the bridge on Pembroke Avenue and the CBC representative said they are the riparian owner of the brook alongside Deville park and do have access to the brook for maintenance. They then visited the bridge on College Road, see image below.
The representative from LCC explained that all road bridges are maintained by LCC highways and they would report back with regard to maintenance in Syston.
From here, they made their way to Victoria street to see the pinch point of the Barkby Brook and a culvert which is in need of repair, there was in depth discussions as to how this area could be improved if at all.
The Melton Road Car park was the next stop and again CBC said they were the riparian owners for the car park side up to half way across the Barkby Brook. It is in this area that the EA are planning to de-silt the brook weather permitting at the end of the summer/early autumn.
So hopefully this area will return to the way it look ten plus years ago. They will remove the silt and vegetation growing in the brook from the bottom corner of the car park, all the way round beside the butcher’s, under the bridge and right down to the railway bridge the other side of Memorial park.
A major concern raised to the agencies by several people including the butcher, is the wall behind the shops on Melton Road and visible from the car park which are deteriorating to the point that bricks and stones from the wall are falling into the brook and it is at risk of collapse which could be dangerous for the buildings as they could fall into the brook. This was left with the agencies to find out who the landowners are as they will be riparian owners.
From there the party walked along the brook to wards Memorial Park, noting down all the overgrown areas, some of which the riparian owners will need to be identified.
The walk ended at the Fosseway Road bridge, where the EA confirmed they had widened the brook on the Meadow Lane side of the Fosseway bridge after they had been notified by a residents at the drop in event in March of a landslip causing the brook to be narrowed. They also confirmed they had widened the Brook at the bridle way on Meadow Lane, but they didn’t repair the bridge, so the Stn can only presume that LCC had repaired it.
The reeds that have grown into a reed bed and will need to be removed again, with a hope that the rhizomes are also removed, although they will probably self-seed again, so this is an ongoing issue.
The Stn was told by the EA that the Barkby Brook is currently their number one priority, so assured the us that the work will be carried out at the end of the summer.
The SCFG said after the walk through that they were pleased that the main flood alleviation agencies; the EA, LCC and CBC are working together to improve the Barkby Brook for the benefit of the residents of Syston and will keep in touch with them all.
They were pleased that the agencies were listening to the residents affected by the recent floods, some of whom will not be back in their homes until the end of this year or even the beginning of next year.