Grantham Town Council to explore setting up community resilience plan following flooding in Belton Lane in January 2025

Devastating flooding that hit a town in January has prompted councillors to look into setting up a new plan for responding to emergencies.

Grantham town councillors heard from Phil Swinton, health and safety manager at South Kesteven District Council, and Mark Garthwaite, from Lincolnshire County Council and the Lincolnshire Resilience Forum, about setting up a community resilience plan for the town.

If such a plan is in place, it means the council communicates with the forum on what is done in case of an emergency, rather than take on responsibilities while the emergency is in progress.

Phil told councillors: “The whole idea is that we push the idea of a community plan out to all towns and parish councils so they can support themselves in the early stage of an incident.

“The whole purpose of the plan is so you don’t take on responsibility for things that you shouldn’t be.

“The plan itself is more of a communications document. It’s about how you would communicate and then who with.”

Phil also said councils were “painfully aware” of the impact of not having something like this in place, following recent flooding that resulted in the banks of the River Witham bursting along Belton Lane in January, resulting in many residents having to leave their flood-hit homes.

Mark also gave more details on the plans, saying how it goes through trigger points when the plan is activated.

He said: “The plan is really about communication. Who do we ring?

“What’s the number? How do we get there? And that is that in a nutshell what the plan is.”

Councillors were invited to ask questions to Phil and Mark.

Councillor Paddy Perry (Ind) questioned the scope of the plan, stating how the town council was still in its infancy and if it could take on a plan like this.

He said: “We are an infant town council still putting ourselves together, I just wonder what the scope is.

“We don’t even have our own building.”

In reply to Coun Perry, Mark said that the problem comes back to “urban versus rural environment” and how many parish councils would have a village hall to house people during an emergency.

However, he told councillors how it would be up to them to decide where a safe location would be.

Mark said: “It may well be that between yourselves and the district you need to say ‘is there a building that we can have access to?’

“You will know in your own communities that maybe there's a church with a very good church hall and you could use that.

“It’s about using what you’ve got in the community.”

Councillor Rob Shorrock (Lab) praised the forum’s work, stating it was “absolutely excellent” and “it is what the council should be doing”.

He also said how the plans were very “volunteer driven”.

Coun Shorrock added: “Not only are people volunteering their time, but also their skills.

“As a council, it’s not about us delivering something, it's about facilitating a programme of responsibility and being able to bring that together.

“It’s what councils should be doing.”

Following Coun Shorrock's comments, Phil reiterated the flooding that hit Belton Lane, telling councillors how authorities were “disappointed” with how the street was affected.

He added: “If we had the information from the ground that there were people there, then we would have offered temporary housing.

“The first thing we would have done is open up Wyndham Park visitor centre as an immediate safe space.

“So that is the sort of thing we can support with by offering this.”

Councillors voted unanimously that they would arrange a separate meeting where they would hear a 90-minute presentation on the forum and community resilience planning.