The flooding that hit Lewes on 12 October will have been seen on television news bulletins by many Members. The flood water came suddenly and rose quickly, submerging whole areas of Lewes and making the town unrecognisable. Within hours, 400 homes had to be evacuated and the main commercial area of the town had been wrecked. Some streets, such as Morris road in the Cliffe area and Spences lane in Malling, still look like warzones. In those places, contaminated water ran up to 12 ft deep, submerging not only the ground floors of dwellings but penetrating the upper floors as well.
I pay tribute to the work of the emergency services, especially the fire service, which was superb, as was the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Members may have seen footage of institution workers rescuing people from their homes in boats. It is a tribute to the emergency services that no one died in the floods and very few were injured.
I thank and express my admiration for Lewes district council, which has, in football vernacular, played a blinder. Within a couple of hours, emergency rest centres were established so that no one from the 400 evacuated houses went without food or shelter. In the hours and days that followed, the council issued regular updates to local residents, which were posted through every door in the town, arranged for mass clearances of flood-damaged goods, handed out mops, buckets and detergents and even provided disposable cameras to help residents with insurance claims. It also arranged for a free bus to the supermarket in Newhaven, given that the two in Lewes were unavoidably closed. I also acknowledge the sound contribution made by county council social services staff in helping victims of the floods when they were at their most vulnerable. The coordination with the district council's housing team was both impressive and reassuring.