By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
A Gloucestershire council says it is now better prepared in dealing with emergencies after devastating flooding wreaked havoc in a market town last year.
People were evacuated as 52 homes and 32 businesses were flooded during Storm Bert in Lydney in November.
Princess Anne visited the Severnside town in February and was reportedly shocked by the devastation.
Civic chiefs were concerned about the apparent slow response to the flooding at the time and asked questions about the preparedness of local emergency responders to deal with the emergency.
But now Forest of Dean District Council chiefs have been told gaps in the way the authority responds to flooding have been addressed.
New roles have been created and learning of the devastating floods means the council should be better prepared in future.
Councillors demanded a report following the devastation to make sure that mistakes would not be repeated. And this was presented to the overview and scrutiny committee last month.
The report and subsequent hearing set out how weather forecasters failed to predict the severity of the storm, with double the amount of rain falling than had been anticipated.
Emergency services on the scene failed to alert a coordinating group that the situation in Lydney was deteriorating which led to no formal multi-agency response, as should have taken place, according to the report.
Response plans have since been reviewed, a new emergency response team and liaison roles have been established within the District Council and residents have been contacted.
The council’s main role is to look after the people who are displaced during a major incident.
Rebecca Gundy, emergency planning officer, presented the report at the overview and scrutiny committee on July 17.
She said: “On the weekend in question, the Met Office issued a yellow weather warning and we were expecting from that warning between 50ml to 70ml of rain.
“What actually happened, we received a month’s worth of rainfall within the two days.
“That far exceeded the predicted totals and the forecast we were expecting.
“Storm Bert turned into a significant weather event affecting several places across the country.
“Lydney is a rapid response catchment area which means the tributary and everything that runs down towards Lydney react very quickly to any rainfall and it means that we were not likely to get much of a warning when that is going to cause an issue.
“It might rain in Coalway, Coleford and that comes up quite quickly and it all rushes down to Lydney through Parkend and Whitecroft.
“Over the weekend the situational awareness was not fed to the district council, what was happening on the day.
“What we would normally have in place is an operational level, a tactical level and if the incident needs it we would activate at strategic level.
“The operational response on the ground didn’t feed through to that tactical level so we weren’t getting the information that we needed to make the decisions and establish rest centres or share the information that we needed to through our normal communications channels.
“Because that didn’t happen, there were other things going on. The emergency planning team was trying to gather intelligence about what was happening.
“We were liaising with the fire and rescue service and the environment agency to try and understand what we were actually expecting to happen in that area.
“Although we were not officially notified through the multi-agency route, we continued to work with our partners and get the information that we need.
“We did some work with Lydney Town Council and they established two places of safety on the instruction of that operational response on the ground.
“And we put our resources on stand-by to go and support them if they needed it. Luckily they didn’t need it and everyone who was evacuated from their homes went to other places.
“There weren’t many households that actually needed to leave their homes, some did stay but the ones that did want to leave went to family and friends or found alternative accommodation themselves.
“The places of safety weren’t required and they were able to shut them down.”
Debriefs have since taken place and identified any learning to make sure those issues don’t happen again.
The council has established a local authority liaison officer, someone who lives within the area and can feed information back to the team in the council.
And internally they have strengthened their emergency response team as well as working with the town council on their emergency plan and now they have a single plan.
The council will go out next month to consult with people in the rapid response catchment area.
Chairman Nick Evans (C, Tidenham), speaking after the meeting, said he asked for the report to be referred to the committee as it is important councils and emergency services learn the lessons of what happened to residents in Lydney last November.
“We can’t let that happen again,” he said.
“This is a good and detailed report, and the committee really valued how honest the officer had been who put it together.
“She has done an excellent job in identifying what went wrong and more importantly sets out how the council and other emergency responders have learned from this experience.
“It’s the job of scrutiny inquiries to make sure that events like this aren’t just brushed under the carpet and improvements are made, so I am pleased that hasn’t happened in this case.
“The gaps identified in the response by local people and the Town Council have been filled, a new response team being established and plans reviewed alongside awareness raising activities.
“Resilience and preparedness for emergencies is important, so learning from incidents when they happen can make sure we’re all ready for the future.”