Chapter V The Duke Street Floods

 

    Next day the rains came. They continued intermittently for over a week with a particularly violent downpour one day, complete with thunder and lightning. I was back at work when I got a call from Penny Wyndham at the Framden Journal.

   It transpired that a small stream that eventually sweeps into the River Brent had burst its banks in the heavy rain and flooded several houses in Duke Lane. Did I know that floods had occurred here some 20 years ago, and local residents had been asking for flood defences? My first reaction was to say that I would ring her back. With a heavy heart I checked with the Engineers’ Department. I was told that some modest flood defences were being planned but again they had not been prioritised and there was no fixed date for carrying them out. Oh no, I thought. Another own goal! I rang Penny back reluctantly. She already had a Melanie Sheldrake quote in her story about further Council neglect of the flood defences. This time I was not going to be trampled in her elephant charge. “Please remind Councillor Sheldrake that she has been Councillor in Corindale Ward for four years now and what has she done about it?”

   I was pleased at that and returned to my work. But something was gnawing away at me. Surely, I thought, it is not enough to score points against Melanie Sheldrake. What about the poor residents of Duke Lane?

  I excused myself from work and took a pair of wellingtons from our store. Nothing strange there as quantity surveyors do sometimes have muddy building sites to visit. Again, I took the bus to the area as I did not wish to risk using my car. This time I remembered my mobile, however. When I got to Duke Lane, normally a picturesque village atmosphere with quaint old shops running along the little stream, I came across a miserable sight. The water was lapping its way along the street like a long lazy monster. A number of cars were under water to a height of two to three feet and lampposts and railings poked eerily through the water. At least 6 houses were affected, two of them with shop fronts. I waded out to the first house and saw a man trying to place rubbish bags under his front door to prevent the water coming in. They were not really a sufficient protection. 

    “I think you could do with sandbags,” I shouted to him.

    “Bloody right, mate!” he yelled back, “and where do I get them?!”

    I did not reply, for what reply could I give him? I looked around. I could see a minivan from our Council engineers’ department, as well as a car with a Thames Water logo parked a little way back down a part of the lane not yet flooded. The two drivers were deep in discussion along with a policeman. I walked back to them.

  “Hello, guys,” I said, “I’m a local Councillor. What can we do to help these people?” 

  “Well, Sir, we don’t think the water will get any higher,” said one of them, “and should recede by tomorrow, provided there’s no more rain. We have already ordered sand-bags and should get some here within the hour.”

   “Good! What about pumps to get the water out?”

   “Too early, sir, we can only do that when the water has receded. Otherwise, there is nowhere to pump it too.”

    That was a naïve question on my part, I thought. “Anything else I can tell the residents?”

    “Yes,” said the borough engineer, “tell them to move their valuables and food upstairs, switch off any gas or electricity, make sure any children are safe, and if they can still reach their cars in an area not yet flooded to drive their families to friends or to a community centre. I understand from my manager that the vicar at St Thomas in Henley Street round the corner has offered to take them in. I’ve got his number, Councillor, if you would like to ring him.”

    I confirmed details with the vicar and then borrowed a megaphone from the engineer and waded back down the street followed by the policeman. As we passed each house, I announced the advice I had been given. Some of the houses were still empty. Their owners were either not at home or on holiday, oblivious to what had happened. I got their relevant phone numbers to pass them the news. I spoke to householders, promising them sandbags and saying the Council will help with the clear up. It took some time to convince one teenager whose parents were away that he would have to switch off his TV. Only one shopkeeper complained about the missing flood defences, but the others got on with protecting their homes, moving their cars and their families where that was possible. Some seven families eventually settled at St Thomas’ Church for the night. Within a half hour sandbags arrived along with two rubber dinghies. I actually carried one elderly lady out of her house and placed her in a dinghy and then towed her down the street to a safe area from where a police car drove her to the church sanctuary.

  In the middle of all this I got another call from Penny. Apparently, a photographer and a junior journalist were on the way. Carrying that old lady as I waded through the shallows in my wellies had looked very photogenic.

  An hour later Melanie Sheldrake turned up dressed like a trawler fisherman in a bright yellow mac. She too was very courteous to all the residents offering them tea from her thermos flask. Then she visited them in the sanctuary. Except that I was already there. She then realised that one councillor in his wellingtons was a photo opportunity. A second councillor arriving an hour later was not.   

   I struck up quite a friendship with the residents of Duke Lane over the next weeks helping and advising with the restitution of their properties. I had also managed to place the issue of some basic flood defences on the agenda of the council cabinet to ensure that it would be a priority in next year’s annual budget.

  I always took my constituency work very seriously. I spent many hours late into the evening in the Members’ Room working away on the computer as I could concentrate better there. Reading agenda papers was always a doleful exercise and you had to learn to select what you needed and to be aware how much officers could be manipulating your choices. 

   Normally after presenting a report, council officers offer 3 options and Councillors are flattered into believing that they are undertaking a choice. However, if they look at the options carefully, they will find that the first option is very radical and flies in the face of your Party’s election manifesto, the second suggests a gross overspend to the budget and will not be endorsed by the Finance Panel; the last seems radical but, in the circumstances, reasonable. So, we Councillors choose the last option. But the Council officer knows all along that this was the only option we could have made. It’s a bit of a con.

  While working in the Members’ Room, I was also still able to pick up snippets of information from my colleagues and to check the best method of approach, particularly with the area housing officer for my ward. I felt particularly helpless over issues of homelessness and of people waiting for council or housing association property year after year when young girls were often jumping the queue by having babies and being classified as “vulnerable”.

 Sometimes this all came a little too close to home. It was a cold October early evening and I had been working in the Members’ Room for several hours on my own. Suddenly a young lady appeared with a baby in a pram. She asked for another Councillor from a different ward. I told her he would not be available at that time. She looked around the spacious room.

“It’s warm here,” she said.

 I nodded. “It’s OK.”

 “Well, I’ve been waiting for a council flat for weeks,” she said. “I shall just stay in this room for a couple of nights. Then they’ll have to house me. Just let me get my things!” 

  As soon as she had left, I packed my briefcase, walked out of the Members’ Room and locked it. Then I slipped out of the building. I had denied the poor woman a chance to make her protest and even to find a warm shelter for herself for the night. I felt bad about this but the last thing I wanted was a media story about a Council hurling out a young squatter family from the town hall. I could imagine her desperately wandering the dark council corridors with her bundle and her child looking for a warm place to stay.

 The year wore on, autumn cycle of council meetings concerned with Diwali, Guy Fawkes, battles over school places and unswept autumn leaves followed by the winter cycle of council meetings concerned with snow, ice, elderly residents freezing in unheated flats and the Mayor’s charity Christmas appeals. The spring cycle of meetings brings in complaints about council buildings requiring repair, and potholes, both caused by the winter weather. These cycles are seasonal and can be counted to appear at regular intervals in council meetings, letters to the press, our own correspondence and at our surgeries. All in all, Melanie Sheldrake wrote a letter to the Journal nearly every week on potholes. Melanie “Pothole” Sheldrake, my party colleagues began to call her.

    Early spring was taken up with a strike by social services staff. It was very problematic as we sought to amend our newly approved annual budgets hiring private staff to fill in the emergency jobs at children’s’ homes and elderly care centres. There was a lot of bad publicity as we feared any story that could lead to the death of a child ostensibly in care or of a vulnerable pensioner with Council and union ready to blame the other. Finally, a settlement was reached requiring a further virement from our battered budget.

    By the time of the annual mayor making in May we felt the worst was over, the potholes and repairs were being completed, the warmer spring weather was lifting people from their winter depression and we had one more year behind us. Things were going so well that in my late May surgery with Meena we seemed to have no visitors at all. We chatted and checked our council papers and finally Meena left before time. Then ten minutes before our surgery session was due to end I received an angry delegation from an elderly retired doctor and four others complaining about an unusually ambitious housing and office development on an industrial site in a neighbouring ward. I listened patiently to their protests and concerns, but I already had my own notion of how to approach this development.

   The saga of Pinkerton Plaza was about to burst open and overwhelm me.