Syston Hit by Third Flood in Sixteen Months!
On 6th January 2025 residents woke or were awoken by Syston Flood Wardens around 6.00am as the Barkby Brook broke its banks and flooded homes again!
A lot of these homes had only just recovered from 4th January 2024 and are now clearing new carpets and furniture again!
For some, this is the third time in 16 months, even after taking precautions to prevent future flooding! The sandbags didn’t protect for very long, they became overwhelmed by the amount of water.
The upset is understandable, as it is incomprehensible when the EA has all but finished the clearing of the brook through the town.
A very useful website you can visit to help you recover from being flooded, and to help you to protect your home against future floods is https://floodmary.com/
However, it would appear that our existing flood alleviation systems where also overwhelmed or didn’t provide the protection they should do.
The Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDs) above Syston behind the Saxby Drive and Black Friars estates have not held back the water as they should. This is probably due to the value heads having been vandalised, these were reported in June 2024 but as yet have not been replaced. The consequences are that any water flowing into the SUDs has flowed directly into the Brook adding to the problem rather than helping to alleviate it. You can see from the photographs left, that they have some water in them but they are not at capacity!
However, it is becoming apparent that Syston and surrounding villages, Barkby, Queniborough and East Goscote all of which suffered flooding to properties need more sustainable and effective flood alleviation systems. To avoid annual flooding in the town and surrounding villages.
It will need a combination of natural systems like planting trees and leaky dams higher up the watercourse.
There is also a need for a water storage system which could collect water in times of heavy rainfall that would help alleviate flooding but could then be used in times of water shortages to be used by farmers and even go into the general water supply for households to use.
These systems are expensive but our town and area deserves to have existing homes protected from flooding!
Homeowners are finding they cannot sell their properties, due to more frequent floods, so are trapped in a terrible situation.
As for new developments, residents feel that these should be put on hold until suitable systems are put in place to protect the existing homes from further flooding.
