Bury St Edmunds MP Jo Churchill hopes meetings will spark action on Compiegne Way flooding

Solutions are being pursued to tackle repeated flooding on a major Bury St Edmunds road which caused chaos earlier this year.

Jo Churchill, MP for the town, said she wants to herald the ‘drum beat of action’ over the issues with Compiegne Way after speaking with the Minister for Transport Guy Opperman and convening a meeting with various community figures, Suffolk County Council, Suffolk Highways and businesses to forge a way forward.

The stretch of the A143 was closed for nearly four weeks in January due to heavy flooding which caused widespread disruption for residents and businesses.

Mrs Churchill said the meeting on April 5 discussed a series of potential short, medium and long term actions which could be taken to ensure the town doesn’t lose one of its key arteries.

They include an increased maintenance programme, a ‘pump watch’, more ground boreholes and investigation work, looking at reservoirs and HGV traffic and raising the road level.

“Compiegne Way has been a bit of a pain for a few years – if you talk to local farmers in particular, for most of its lifetime because of where the water table is but it’s never been as catastrophic to the town as it was this year,” she said.

“The problem is when you lose a main artery like this, it puts so much pressure on the other places. Moreton Hall, I had no end of constituents emailing and talking to me in town, Great Barton similarly, the Fornhams. The challenge was we had 130 per cent more rainfall than we’d had before.”

Last year, she said a colossal amount of work was carried out with new pumps installed and desilting, costing about £550,000, but partially due to vandalism and the weight of the rain, the system didn’t pump sufficiently.

“Part of the problem this year was the pumping equipment was pumping out flooded houses because there was a limit to the bowsers in the country so I’ve said because I was under the impression that we should have some of this equipment,” said Mrs Churchill.

“It certainly was mooted that we would have some of our own pumping equipment so people have gone away to look at that.”

When the work was carried out last year, the county council offered a maintenance programme and she has asked the authority to look at doubling that to every three months.

Setting up a collective ‘pump watch’ was suggested so if they see the levels rising, the authority is immediately alerted to ensure the water is siphoned away.

“Last year they put in state of the art, so I was told, pumps so we’re going to look at pump design and replacing some of the drainage work it goes into so looking at some spiral drainage or drainage down the side of the road in order to get the water off the road,” she said.

In the medium term, further investigations will be made into the installation of more ground boreholes and commissioning ground investigation to understand the geology. They will look at reducing and diverting the catchment area using the roadside storage ditches so when the river levels are high the water is removed as much as possible.

Also raised was the possibility of more reservoirs or works to reservoirs and adding a Traffic Regulation Order to the affected roads to stop the HGV traffic going through the villages and Moreton Hall.

Mrs Churchill said British Sugar, which was at the meeting, was going to look at its site to see if there were options that would allow HGVs to access the A14 without the need to use local roads.

Long-term, the ideal solution would be raising the road level, she said.

“Suffolk County Council has gone away to look at costs, what an optimum scheme looks like and the reason I spoke to Guy Opperman was I knew other colleagues had done road repairs because this isn’t National Highways it would have to come out of local funds and we’ll all have to bear a bit of the pain,” Mrs Churchill said.

Colleagues have brought forward similar projects through Section 106 developer contributions.

“If the county deal lands with additional money, I stuck my hand up and said can I have some of that for this road,” she said.

Mrs Churchill: “What came out of it was really good because there was joint-working.

“For me the important thing is the drum beat of action because fine it was unusual this year but we know that this is a potential weak spot as the town grows.”

The group intends to meet on a regular basis.

Asked about timescales, Mrs Churchill said she would like to deliver the short and medium term objectives within the next three to six months but it was challenging to give a defined timeline for some aspects.

“The long-term one is the money for the major road and as we know these things take a long, long time,” she said. “It’s a bit how long is a piece of string but we have to have an eye on the prize which is ultimately some form of reconfiguration or a new road and if you don’t ask, you don’t get and before that money lands at SCC I want them to know that Bury’s need is high on their agenda.”

Cllr Birgitte Mager, who attended the meeting, said it was positive because everyone was working from the same hymn sheet.

"Everybody wants to find a long-term solution and that is basically what is being worked on," she said.

She said the meeting was a 'dream scenario' with all the experts gathered in one room 'and the money sits in the room as well', referring to Mrs Churchill as an MP.

"That's when there's a glimmer of hope and that's what I feel we now have. We need to find a long-term solution because Bury is an area of growth."

She added: "I am reassured on behalf of all the residents of Moreton Hall, you are absolutely being heard."

A Freedom of Information request into repairs carried out in Compiegne Way found that in 2019, the replacement of a filter drain, new signs, posts and crash barrier works as well as pump repairs and replacement cost £547,998.82.

The county council said an investigation report into the source of the flood water would be published soon.