Complaints about flooding blocking a road on the edge of the city have prompted swift action from Anglian Water.

Neighbours in Hammond Way and Greenborough Road in Sprowston were becoming increasingly concerned about the issue, with some asking if drainage for new housing in the area was responsible.

The knee-deep water made the roads impassable and combined with roadworks at the junction with Woodside Road to make access difficult after the recent storms Babet and Ciaran.

However, Anglian Water has installed a new pump that it hopes will ease the problems.

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A spokeswoman said: “We’re really sorry that some customers in Sprowston were affected by flooding in the recent wet weather.  

“Our maintenance team has installed a bigger pump at Hammond Way Pumping Station, which allows for increased flows. They will also be upgrading the station’s second pump – this means that the pumping station will be able to manage a greater capacity.” 

The company is also planning on investigating the source of the floods further.  

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The spokeswoman continued: “We’ve also begun a full CCTV survey of the area, to investigate any infiltration into our networks.  

“Our network is designed to take foul water only, but we know surface water infiltrates the network when it rains, and there are misconnections from road drains and individual property downpipes too.  

“Our engineers have installed flow monitors in the network, which will allow us to compare the flow coming into our sewers during dry and wet weather.”  

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The firm also addressed claims that their system could not cope with the new homes in the area, after nearby Salhouse Road was closed for much of 2020 for drainage work. 

The spokeswoman added: “We are not a statutory consultee in planning applications, which means developers have an automatic right to connect their surface water drainage to our network.

“We would like to see this change, but we do work with developers and other third parties to reduce the risk of flooding for our customers, and we will continue to do so in Sprowston.”