April 26, 2023 8.00 pm This story is over 11 months old

Thousands of Lincolnshire drains not cleaned due to cars blocking access

“Pay attention to essential drain cleaning notices”, council says
An urgent warning to those who use side roads to park cars in Lincolnshire. | Photo: Lincolnshire County Council

A staggering 2,500 Lincolnshire drains couldn’t be cleaned by LCC because of vehicles parked in the way.

Lincolnshire County Council has issued an urgent plea to road users who park on roads and footpaths to pay attention to essential drain cleaning notices after it emerged that 2,500 gullies couldn’t be cleaned because notice signs were ignored.

A recent investigation by the County Council into streets with vehicles parked up showed that, on previous drainage cycles in some cases as many as 60% of the gullies on certain streets that needed cleaning were blocked off by a parked vehicle that couldn’t be moved.

Council teams down St Catherine’s Grove in Lincoln. | Photo: Lincolnshire County Council

Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for Highways said: “This is such an issue for us now that we need to address it in a public way and ask road users for their immediate help.

“As we have all seen in recent years, the issue of drainage is a very serious one and we desperately need access to gullies like this so that we can keep them in working order.

“As part of our need to get on with this essential cleaning and our messaging to everyone who parks on the street, we are using new temporary street signs to promote when we will be cleaning in a particular area where necessary.

“We appreciate that there will be a level of inconvenience in vehicle owners moving their vehicles when we need to clean these essential bits of the drainage system, but we really need to get to these gullies in particular.

“The size of the tanker that is needed to clean these gullies is about the same as an HGV, so the issue is immediately apparent when vehicles are parked up during cleaning schedules.

“Any assistance that drivers can give us in this respect would be a very real help. In a county as large as Lincolnshire, our crews have nearly 150,000 gullies to maintain and keep clear.

“We can’t carry out the preventative maintenance that we need to in some cases because of the 2,500 gullies that we couldn’t get to.

“This is currently having, and will go on to be, a huge impact on what we need to do to ensure that drainage maintenance is carried out and the impact from potential flooding threats are lessened.”

What do we do?

An LCC officer puts advance warning signs out between 3-7 days prior to the cleanse date for streets included on our list where vehicle issues are identified.

Consequences?

Simply put, if people don’t comply with the signage, then our cleansing tanker can’t get access to the gullies – so the gullies don’t get cleaned. The consequences of the cleaning not happening are that, long term, some drains could become blocked which could ultimately lead to them not working and possibly flooding.

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