MADAM, We seem to have spent the last eight years trying to keep water from the motorway out of the river. So perhaps we should go back 50 years and try again.

The pre-Beatles solution to Brookend Street was a good idea but not quite sufficient. In peak weather conditions we get a surge of water coming down Broad Street and, for some reason, this 1950s system cannot cope. Until the recent dry spell we were getting one or two floods a year and I am told that, on this July 6th, we had three separate floods a couple of hours apart.

So far, I know of three ways of containing this peak initial surge: A surge tank with a small drainage pump off the side of Brookend Street; Another 36 inch sewer to supplement the existing one across the Redmeadow car park; and connecting the empty 'Flood Alleviation Scheme' siphon for use as a surge tank.

None of these seems very expensive; the second doesn't need another pump, the third already has one and is probably the cheapest.

Keith Horne,

Gorsley