Woman blocks road with car to stop home flooding

A WOMAN blocked her road to drivers to protect her home from flooding.

Victoria Cooper parked her car and put out traffic cones across the entrance to Church Lane, Peppard, during the heavy rain on Friday.

This caused a queue of traffic to form on Peppard Common as drivers were unable to enter the cul-de-sac. More than 30 houses and the church were inaccessible.

Mrs Cooper said that vehicles passing her property would cause a “tidal wave” and the drains in the road couldn’t cope.

Peppard Parish Council sent her four sandbags to help prevent water from entering her home but she said this wasn’t enough.

Mrs Cooper said: “If you want me to move my car, ring the police because I’m not doing it. In fact, if you ring the police, I’ll buy you a pack of beers. I’m making a stand — I’m making a point.

“When people drive past, it causes this tidal wave. This is the worst it has been.

“It’s because of the drains. I’ve been here for nine years, and every year this has happened. The [county] council did some work two or three years ago to help improve the situation. Well, I tell you what, it hasn’t improved anything and they are so ignorant, they don’t speak to me, they don’t correspond with me.

“I’ve put the car across the road because I’m sick to death of it. This water needs to stop. This water needs to go.

“It’s the inconvenience of everything. Every time this happens, we have to come out in the pouring rain and have to put sandbags and cones out, it is just time-consuming.

“I cannot fault Peppard Parish Council. They are absolutely amazing and delivered four sandbags but what are four sandbags going to do?

“My neighbours helped dig a trench because we have got home improvements going on, so the water is going through to the back garden.

“The flooding is in my next-door neighbour’s garage as well and she is an elderly lady. When her son’s not here, I look after her and she lost her husband last year.” Neighbour Sue Tatchell said: “It is beyond the pale. I mean, we don’t live near a river, for goodness’ sake. How can I sell my house? I couldn’t, could I?

“We’ve had to leave all the sandbags there all the time, just in case, because I can’t move them on my own. This is the worst it has ever been.”

Her son, Neil, drove up from Somerset to help protect his mother.

He said: “It’s the tenth time our garage has flooded like this. All the boxes get ruined.

“Victoria organised for some sandbags. She asked for a big delivery of like 20 each but they didn’t give us them. If we had a double row (of sandbags) there, we probably would stop the water.

“We’ve been trying to sort this out for more than 10 years. It’s days before it drains.

“They don’t give us any stuff to block the roads properly. When people drive through there, it makes it five times worse as you get a tidal surge down here just from the cars passing. They don’t slow down unless we’re out in the road to scream at them, they just drive through. The council are no help; they just do a quick fix, suck out the blockage in the drain and then leave.”

A spokesman from Oxfordshire County Council, said: “Exceptionally heavy rain on Friday created a number of flooding issues around the county. There was 25mm of rain in a 24-hour period which led to flood alerts and flooding issues through wide parts of the South.

“This particular issue is due to complex drainage problems. Church Lane relies on a borehole soakaway to deal with surface water. Although this is operational, it has a low capacity and there is also another failed soakaway in Church Lane.

“We aim to deliver a borehole soakaway to take the highway flood water away.

“However, we have been unable to progress this as quickly as we would like due to problems sourcing an approved sub-contractor to undertake the specialist drilling. We are exploring a number of ways to resolve this issue.”