SCHEMES to combat flooding on roads in the Maldon district are among more than £300,000 of highways improvements set to benefit the region over the next 12 months.
About 79 per cent of the Maldon District Local Highways Panel's £400,000 budget has been earmarked for 21 road improvements, with a focus on drainage in the district's flooding hotspots.
The announcement comes more than eight months after the worst rain in the area's history turned the roads into rivers, and saw cars left abandoned by owners as they sank in the floods.
"It's too little too late for our road. The county council have only started cleaning the drains two weeks ago. It's taken them eight months to get going," said Paul Ratcliff, who defended his family home in Goldhanger Road, Heybridge, with sandbags when the rains hit last August, and watched his neighbours evacuated from their homes during December due to a risk of severe flooding.
"On that weekend in August the water came within a half an inch of coming in my front door and my neighbour's house was flooded completely," he said.
Essex Police and the fire service received more than 500 emergency calls between them on that afternoon in 2013 with a number of homes flooded and residents in the street left to divert traffic.
Mr Ratcliff said: "It's absolutely brilliant that something will be done, but it should have happened already."
Of the 21 new schemes to be implemented, 17 are traffic management improvements, two are safer roads schemes, one is a passenger transport scheme, and one is a cycling scheme.
To the north of Heybridge, Maypole Road will get a drainage improvement scheme including verge reconstruction and kerbing to alleviate water heading south from the fields above.
It is hoped this will aid another flooding hotspot, Holloway Road, in Heybridge, which regularly floods after heavy rainfall.
Bob Ryall, of Holloway Road, who is a member of the Heybridge Residents' Association, said: "I know that Essex County Council has started some work on Maypole Road already by clearing the ditches that take the rainwater."
Mr Ryall's home sits next to a field earmarked by the Maldon District Council Local Development Plan (LDP) for the building of 1,235 new homes which includes a flood alleviation scheme.
"We are very concerned that the developers will build a sub-standard flood alleviation scheme," he said.
In Goldhanger Road the drainage improvement scheme will take place at two sites near Spicketts Brook, and in Drapers Chase, with further drainage improvements at the Charity Farm Bends, Maldon Road.
