Heartbreaking!

Our hearts go out to those of you traumatised by events on Monday 6th of January, like us you may have been woken by volunteer flood wardens or neighbours hammering on your door, then to see a torrent of water pouring at speed from our antiquated drainage system, before finally Barkby Brook could hold no more, did it’s worst, broke bank and ruined homes and businesses!
Some of you in houses are coming to terms with ‘living upstairs’ again whilst those monstrous machines roar taking moisture out of your damaged homes, residents in bungalows are ‘homeless’, and after watching in total disbelief the chaos in January 2024 we now feel your pain ‘we are, like you, flood victims and homeless to’..!
Rental properties are snapped up without this added surge, trying to understand rentals and your home insurance with your head spinning in a circle is something else, it makes you feel physically sick, mentally it’s soul destroying. They mean well but living with family and friends isn’t a long term solution for anyone’s well-being and sadly this article won’t even be seen by some of the usual readers!
The system is broken, the council authorities for a multitude of reasons past and present have failed us, they predicted 20+ years ago that flooding may happen in certain areas if no investment was made to adequately maintain the brook and importantly ‘slow the flow’ (don’t forget to throw in the predicted climate change, back then they knew)! In our opinion Syston just wasn’t important enough to receive their funding, instead they handed over a chunk of responsibility to the EA and promptly forgot their responsibilities to us the ratepayers! They took the cheaper option whilst approving more new builds up stream, more ratepayers equals more income for the council authorities!
This rant is not aimed at people who bought those new-builds, you need homes to, you bought in good faith, it’s aimed at the system, the once green fields that now sit predominantly under tarmac so the rainfall runs off not soaks into the ground, it collects nicely in those newly built drains, then intentionally gets routed by man-made culverts (drains) at speed towards Barkby Brook ripping the heart out of Syston when these freak storms hit.
It’s also been sad to read that a senior member of our borough council isn’t “familiar with the brook and it being passed to the EA to monitor”… granted they wouldn’t have been employed all those years ago (as said above, its not personal) but surely after events in January 2024 they would have made it a priority to be up to speed by January 2025?
To all our council authorities please tell us ‘what you’ve done to actually alleviate the flood risk in Syston’ over these years, we question what you’ve spent our money on!
Lastly, to those in all three council authorities telling residents to ‘Be Prepared’ you haven’t actually got a Clue, where were ‘You’ on January 6th, feel free to enlighten us, because we’re not the only residents asking!
M & K
‘Flood Hit Residents’