We have received another bulletin from Thames Water regarding sewer capacity in Brookside and dated yesterday. It reads as follows:

I am pleased to confirm our Technical Specialist has assessed the footage from the recent clean of the sewers in London Road and Brookside. He has confirmed that the sections of sewer which have been cleaned are now free-flowing and fully operational. 

There is a final section of the foul sewer in London Road which we now need to clean and camera survey to ensure the sewer is operating at full capacity. This has been scheduled for 4 October. 

Further to our discussion about sewer size in the area, our Asset Management team have confirmed that they recently completed a catchment wide hydraulic modelling study using flow monitors. This did show a degree of hydraulic incapacity in the London Road – Brookside area but our Sewer Flooding History Database shows the last flooding caused by hydraulic overload was in 2010. 

All of the recent flooding incidents have been caused by blockages of fat and grease, so there is insufficient history of a capacity issue to justify further studies or a network upgrades at this time. They have also confirmed that increasing the size of the sewers is not the right solution for sewer flooding relating to blockages as even with a larger size sewer, blockages will still occur.

Once the clean of the sewer in London Road has been completed I will ask the local Field Operations Specialist to consider placing the sewer in London Road and Brookside on our Planned Maintenance programme. This will mean they are cleaned regularly to prevent flooding caused by blockages from happening.       

I hope this information is useful, I will continue to monitor our progress and will contact you with a further update by 7 October to confirm the final section of sewer was cleaned as planned.