Littlehampton councillor, and mayor elect, Sean Lee, has called for urgent action after severe flooding left dozens homeless and their businesses in tatters.
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00:00 Hi I'm Councillor Lee, I'm a River Ward Councillor. I was actually away at the time of the floods but
00:05 obviously came back here, heard all about it. Here at Arran Yacht Club obviously there's a
00:10 public meeting going on, a public drop-in session and from what I'm hearing there's a lot of concern
00:15 about the lack of warning and the lack of resources from the Environment Agency which is quite
00:22 disturbing because people have said that in years gone by you know there was sandbags available,
00:28 there was warnings issued and a lot of the residents are telling me they didn't get much
00:32 of a warning you know and it was obviously an exceptionally high tide, there's talk of the
00:37 solar eclipse but these events are going to become more frequent and this side of the river does need
00:43 investment, it needs development and it certainly needs help for the local residents who you know
00:50 appear to have been left defenceless in this case. It's an information gathering exercise you know
00:54 the Environment Agency are here, West Sussex is here, Arran's here, obviously we're here from the
00:59 Town Council as well and I think they're listening to the concerns of local residents and businesses
01:06 but you know again there's been a lot of talk for 20 years about what needs to be done or this could
01:11 be done or that could be done and it's definitely a time for action. A lot of them can't get
01:16 insurance now or they're advised not to take out content insurance so a warning system is the least
01:22 I think that we could you know or should be offered to the residents because as one guy was saying to
01:28 me you know if you get a warning then you can take all your electrical stuff and you can take it up
01:32 to your first floor which isn't great because you're still going to lose obviously you know
01:36 stuff on the ground floor but this time around there was no warning and suddenly he you know
01:41 he had 18 inches of water in his house before he knew it. I'm going to be highlighting a lot of
01:47 issues around the river and the sea and the sewage which again is another concern. Fortunately
01:52 because this river water, which sounds ridiculous, there was not as much contamination I believe as
01:58 had it been sea water you know so that's some degree of luck there but yeah bringing issues
02:06 around the river to public attention is one of my main priorities in the year coming.