Firm forced into town flooding inquiry

The company was forced to admit it might be wrong after residents whose homes were devastated by Wednesday’s flash flooding questioned the effectiveness of its drainage system.

In a statement issued immediately after the floods on Wednesday, it said: “All of our assets continued to operate as they were designed to.”

But a further statement released on Saturday said the company had since met with residents, Goole MP Andrew Percy and East Riding Council and understood it now needed to “undertake a far more detailed analysis” of its response to the flooding.

A spokesman for Yorkshire Water said: “We do not want to add to the uncertainty for local residents but we also want to ensure that our investigation is thorough and robust.”

East Riding and Goole town councillor Malcolm Boatman welcomed the company’s decision to launch the investigation. He said: “I’m aware it was a severe event but obviously we need to get to the bottom of it. There are all sorts of rumours flying around about pumping stations going down because of lightening strikes. If there was a failure we need to find out why it happened and what we can do to prevent that happening in the future.”

Mr Boatman said Yorkshire Water had already made a mistake over the effectiveness of its flood defences following major flooding in Hull in 2007. He said: “It’s following a very similar pattern. Yorkshire Water said everything was working fine and that later turned out not to be the case.

“We will have to wait and see what the findings are. I suspect there will be lessons to be learnt from this.”

Yorkshire Water said it was currently working with East Riding Council and an outcome of the investigation would be released on Wednesday.