Lincolnshire County Council urges drivers to leave space for drains to be cleaned
Thousands of drains are not being cleaned because of vehicles parked in the way.
Lincolnshire County Council was hit out at by Stamford Town Councillor Harrish Bisnauthsing (Lib Dem) at a meeting on Tuesday for not cleaning drains across the town.
He called for the cleaning teams to sort out the blocked drains in streets across Stamford.
The areas recently highlighted on road reporting website FixMyStreet include Northumberland Avenue, Brazenose Lane, Recreation Ground Road and Bath Row.
But it seems the problem may run deeper as the county council issues an urgent plea to road users to not block the drains themselves.
More than 2,500 gullies were not cleaned due to drivers ignoring essential drain cleaning notices and parking their cars in the way.
A recent investigation by the county council into streets with vehicles parked up showed that, on previous drainage cycles in some cases as many as 60 per cent of the gullies on certain streets that needed cleaning were blocked off by a parked vehicle which couldn’t be moved.
Coun Richard Davies (Con), who is in charge of the roads at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “This is such an issue for us now that we need to address it in a public way and ask road users for their immediate help.
“As we have all seen in recent years, the issue of drainage is a very serious one and we desperately need access to gullies like this so that we can keep them in working order.
“As part of our need to get on with this essential cleaning and our messaging to everyone who parks on the street, we are using new temporary street signs to promote when we will be cleaning in a particular area where necessary.
“We appreciate that there will be a level of inconvenience in vehicle owners moving their vehicles when we need to clean these essential bits of the drainage system, but we really need to get to these gullies in particular.”
The size of the tanker needed to clean the gullies is about the same as an HGV.
