AN EMERGENCY plan to help cope with the type of flash floods that devastated parts of Worcester last week is being drawn up by the city council.

Chief executive David Wareing said valuable lessons would be learnt.

He said the council's customer services hotline was jammed with calls from worried residents looking for help when a month's rainfall fell in just 30 minutes last week, wrecking scores of city homes and businesses.

Although the council has an emergency procedure for river flooding it has no procedure for flash floods unless it is considered a full-blown emergency.

Mr Wareing turned up at a city council scrutiny meeting to put his proposals to Severn Trent and Worcester Community Housing.

He said: "We have plans in place to deal with any kind of emergency, but all plans works on the basis that we update it and make sure all agencies know their responsibilities.

"It is now apparent that we need a specific plan to deal with flash flooding, and that will only work if all agencies know who is responsible for what.

"Inevitably, there is a degree of assumption out there, rightly so, that if you have a problem you ring the police or you ring the city council."

Mr Wareing said the council's responsibility was to clean the streets after events like flash floods and to provide emergency housing if needed

"We are prepared to do things if asked, and if the resources are there to do so, but, in summary, dealing with flash floods in the future all comes down to having a good plan, which will be kept up to date, so all agencies know their responsibilities," he said.

Severn Trent and Wocester Community Housing will now meet with the city council to draw up the plan, which chairman of the scrutiny committee, Coun Geoff Williams, will chair.

Coun Williams said: "It is not a question of according blame, it's about what lessons can be learnt from the flash floods so in future people know who to contact and what to do."

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