VILLAGERS who have waited more than 25 years for remedial roadworks are celebrating as diggers have finally been brought in to start work.
Families living in Church Lane, Mayfield, made a raft of complaints to Staffordshire County Council, after works to the road surface outside their homes left large areas of standing water against the frontages of their homes.
Now, after a 25 year campaign to remedy the problem, homeowners have welcomed the sight of road workers digging a drain near their homes.
Leader of Staffordshire County Council, Councillor Philip Atkins, has been in touch with families in Church Lane, including Ernie and Julie Edge, who spearheaded the campaign for a drain.
Councillor Atkins said: “There has been a standing water issue here for a number of years.
“This is because the road surface here has a very flat gradient. However, there is no flooding to properties, merely puddles of standing water that splash properties.
“We are shortly to begin a scheme to alleviate the standing water here by installing a drain and new road gullies which will be piped to an open ditch/soakaway in the location where an articulated trailer was sited.
“Incidentally the trailer belonged to Mrs Edge’s husband and they were the main cause that it has taken so long to resolve this flooding problem, as they would not move their trailer.
“We expect this will resolve the issues.” “Our drainage programme is very heavily oversubscribed and as such our resources will always be targeted to locations where we have real problems of water entering properties and these will always take precedent.
“Other locations are on programmes that are graded in order of priority and I must tell you that Church Lane, Mayfield is quite a way down that list. However, we are aware that a scheme has been planned for a number of years and that we do have an opportunity to fit this in while working on another location nearby.” Mr and Mrs Edge welcomed the move to dig a soakaway before the winter weather. Mr Edge moved his trailer from a verge opposite his home, where he had parked it for 30 years to facilitate the drain.
The couple claim, however, that years of county council re-surfacing of the road outside the cottages has raised the asphalt level, bringing it closer to their thresholds and allowing puddles to seep under their front doors.
Mr Edge said: “This is what we’ve been fighting for 25 years. We’ve had to put up with damage to the property’s walls and the doors and now it’s finally come after all this while.
“What the outcome will be I don’t know. We’ll have to wait until the work is finished and we’ve had a good downpour.
