A useful meeting this morning with county council officers, Environment Agency staff, and neighbouring county councillor Steve Criswell. The meeting was arranged to consider how procedures could be improved when the road at Earith is flooded or at risk of flooding.

The Environment Agency team explained how they have considerable advance warning of flooding at Earith, as they can monitor the rise in the waters from Buckinghamshire through Bedfordshire to Cambridgeshire. When the appropriate trigger point is reached, the Environment Agency warns the County Council’s highways team, and issues an alert.

There are a number of electronic notification signs, which need maintenance, as well as manual flip-down signs in various locations on the road network which are used to warn when the road is flooded. The team will be looking to redesign these signs. I asked them to consider putting signs at the new Ely bypass, to give advance warning to HCV drivers coming off the bypass – and among other things we also discussed adding road closures onto the existing roadworks.org website to improve the accuracy of the information given to the public about whether the road is open or closed.