Norfolk pub put at risk by ‘Britain’s most flooded road’

Dennis Birch estimates his pub loses about £3,000 a week when the road into the village of Welney is closed because of flooding – and this winter, it was closed for a record-breaking 89 days.

Now labelled “the most flooded road in Britain”, Birch said he questions whether the 18th-century Lamb and Flag can survive the impact the flooding has on the number of customers coming through his door.

“It’s been closed on and off since October. To basically lose your trade for a third of the year, well, no business would survive,” said the 71-year-old. “It’s getting worse and worse and worse every year, and gradually it’s just built up to the point where it’s ridiculous.”

The flood waters subsided on Monday, and the road will now probably remain open until next winter. But Birch, who has been running the pub with his wife, Gina, 60, for 25 years, said the increasingly lengthy spells of flooding have left the business in a worse position than during Covid lockdowns.

“The flooding means we get no passing trade, or you’ve got to do a 30-mile diversion to get to us. We do a steak night on a Thursday night where we normally do 50 meals. When the road is flooded, we do six,” he said.

“But the business rates are the same and everything is just going up in price. I thought I could claim on my insurance for business interruption but they said I can’t. We don’t get any financial support.”

The Norfolk village of Welney is no stranger to submerged fields. It sits on the Ouse Washes, a 90,000,000m³ flood storage area that typically spends most of winter underwater as it funnels rainwater from Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire into the sea.

But the A1101, or the Welney Wash Road, which connects the village to the nearby city of Ely and the rest of Cambridgeshire and is used by about 4,000 cars a day, used to be rarely affected. Now, it spends most of winter submerged by up to 2 metres of water.

“It used to be a bit of fun when it flooded because it only happened occasionally. But with global warming and the building on floodplains up the river, the water comes down here in much larger quantities,” said Birch.

Ken Goodger, 67, a local farmer who helps run the Welney Flood Watch group, said the 2023-24 winter season had been the “worst on record” for flooding.

“It started raining in October and the waters came up very quickly, and then we’ve had four if not five flooding periods since then,” he said. “Of course, it was designed to do that back in the 1600s, and it’s still doing it today. But when it rains in the UK now, there’s a lot more runoff in the catchment area.”

He was frequently getting called to use his tractor to pull out cars trapped in the flood waters, so the group was created to give people daily updates on water levels on the river and inform them if it was safe to make the trip.

Emergency callouts have decreased substantially, but Goodger said the impact on the local community was huge.

“The road could do with some stilts, really,” he said. “All the money they throw at some of the other infrastructure projects in the country – if they can put a tunnel under Stonehenge, one would hope they could put a road over the top of Welney Wash. But it’s whether people deem it important.”

Birch said he received support from his local MP, Liz Truss, but no action had been taken. “Nothing has changed in 25 years, except that we get more water and it sticks around for longer,” he said. “They need to raise the road. It’s the simplest solution – I’m not saying it’s cheap, but it’s the cheapest option available. Because when it’s not flooded, it’s a busy A road. When it’s flooded, it’s a causeway.”

Graham Plant, Norfolk county council’s cabinet member for highways, infrastructure and transport, said Welney Wash Road was a key site where the council was working to reduce the risk of flooding.

“The fact is that the causes of flooding along Welney Wash Road are complex, and a full set of mitigation measures would cost as much as £58m: we’re looking into how such work could be funded, including via government support, but sadly there are no quick fixes for this issue,” he said.

The council has also been pushing the government for legislative permission to build reservoirs designed to capture excess water during a flood.

The Environment Agency said it was aware the council had been working on proposals to reduce the frequency of flooding in the area and it had provided technical support and advice.