Flooding fears dominated a tense town council meeting as residents warned they feel “left out” and ignored, despite years of complaints about blocked drains, inadequate culverts and new developments funnelling water towards their homes.
At Cullompton Town Council on Thursday, February 26, people living in Colebrook Lane, Knightswood, and surrounding areas described repeated near misses, gardens under inches of water, and growing anxiety every time it rains.
Norman Harper told councillors that while recent flooding of the Willand to Cullompton road had caused “great inconvenience to shoppers, people getting to work, school, doctors”, the deeper concern lay in long-standing drainage problems in the Padbrook area.
He said: “This culvert in the past has caused trouble by overflowing, as we all know, coming down Culvert Lane, down Swallow Way, flooding the roundabout, and crossing into Knightswood. This was first reported by me in 2017; next year, that will be ten years, and nothing has been done about it.”
Norman said a builder’s wire mesh remains in the stream south of the culvert, “still collecting debris, assisting the build-up of water”, and argued that the structure had already been judged inadequate by the Environment Agency.
“I did a site visit to the culvert and walked the whole stream, and on the day of the visit, the Environment Agency officer deemed that culvert as inadequate because of the over spillage,” he said.
Referring to a document linked to the Culm Valley Park development, he added: “The comments on that are that this culvert is inadequate to take the flow of water, hence the overspill and threatening south of the culvert.”
He also raised concerns about a newly constructed footpath and cycleway connecting a new estate to Colebrook Lane.
“The footpath/cycleway that has been constructed is now allowing a flow of water from the new estate into Colebrook Lane, creating additional water running into Colebrook Lane,” Norman said.
“The length of the footpath, there is no footpath drainage at all. Not one drain. The adjoining land to the footpath is a higher level than the footpath, so the footpath makes the perfect culvert.”
Ruth Tucker, who lives at Knightswood and has been in her home for more than 40 years, described the toll repeated flooding has taken on her household.
“I overlook the field which gets flooded, and I am one of the houses that have been flooded a few times and very nearly flooded recently as well,” she said. “My husband has been out in the last week clearing ditches and blockages, as we are now regularly getting 10 inches in our garden. We have a pump that’s going consistently, and we have neighbours who are also getting flooded.”
She said a ditch between her home and a neighbouring field had effectively become a holding pond because a drain is blocked and not flowing anywhere. After clearance work, the field bank was raised by about a foot, which she said is now higher than the level of nearby gardens.
“Unfortunately, that foot is higher than the level of our gardens and the bank, so it’s coming back into our gardens again,” Ruth said. “My husband has gone out into the field, dug a trench, and that is one foot deep, to try and alleviate that ditch so that we don’t get the backflow into our homes.”
She told councillors residents felt forgotten compared with other parts of town.
“We feel that we’re being left out down there. All we hear is about the top end of town, but where do they think the water is going eventually?” she said. “Once you’ve been flooded, it’s difficult; there’s anxiety when it happens, when there is rain. We have floodgates in the front, pumps in the back, and we can’t do any more.”
Ruth added that she applied for flood resilience funding in 2023 but was turned down because too many households had applied. She said she was told there might be a wider project for Knightswood and that funding would be prioritised for that, “and there has since been no project”.
Devon County Councillor James Buczkowski acknowledged the frustration, telling the meeting: “It’s been going on for years and hasn’t had the attention it deserves, so it’s not going to happen overnight. I will keep pressing, and we will talk to other residents about flood defences we can put into Knightswood.”
He added that there is a budget for flood defences and that efforts would be made to ensure funding comes into Cullompton.
Councillor Chris Snow warned that plans to build housing on the former Padbrook Golf Course site could worsen the situation. “That’s going to exacerbate the Colebrook Brook immensely because it is on a hillside,” he said. “I can see that’s been overwhelmed and it’s going to cause a huge problem at the sewerage works and at Knightswood and maybe further down Meadow Lane.”
Councillor Lloyd Knight said the issue extended beyond one neighbourhood and criticised what he described as the Environment Agency’s limited capacity. “We’re very often on the phone to the Environment Agency, and the response we get is that ‘there’s only one officer for the whole county’. In my mind, that’s not good enough,” he said.
Councillor Sue Robinson pointed to a potential solution put forward by Connecting the Culm, suggesting a marshy triangular field near the former Padbrook Hotel and golf club could be turned into an attenuation pond. She said it “looks as if it works” and could resolve problems at that end of Cullompton.
