Cyclical cleaning
To help stop flooding, we regularly clean the drains and, if needed, the pipes too.
We clean all roadside drains at least once every three years; but we do not clean all the drains at the same number of times each year.
Sometimes there are parked cars blocking the drains on the roads when we try to clear them. If our team can see that the drain is blocked, they will try and come back another time to clear it.
Sometimes drain covers can get stuck. If our team cannot open a lid or cover to clear a drain, they will try and come back another time to fix it. To try and stop lids from getting stuck, we have a programme to check and fix as many covers as we can before our cleaning team clears the drain as normal.
Instead of only reacting to blocked drains, we clean our drains in cycles. This programme means that drains in flooding 'hot spots' are cleared more often than drains less likely to have problems. Our teams suck up the 'silt' from the drain and empty it into special vehicles to dispose of later on.
Please click 'Next' to find out about common drainage issues.