Salisbury locals band together to tackle second flooded underpass

The well-used walkway between Waitrose petrol station and St Paul’s Road was hit by storms Ciara and Dennis, making it impassable.

It comes just weeks after the same group of 'fed up' locals emptied the A36 underpass, also near Waitrose, following heavy rainfall at the end of 2019.

However, this time around, the task was a more difficult one, as the flooded pathway had no neighbouring river for the team to bucket the water in to, as they did before.

A "frustrated" resident, Benji Goehl, took matters into his own hands and organised a generator, some pumps and other volunteers to assist in pumping out the underpass.

Mr Goehl and his colleagues Jimmy Walker, Richard Davis, Richard Bolton and Jono Byrne arrived on site, on February 13, with loaned equipment and set to pumping out the huge volume – approximately 20m3 – of water.

Employees of Highways England arrived later that morning to assist, and said that they had only been notified to attend to the problem that morning.

Mr Bolton said that he attempted to cycle through the underpass from St Paul’s Road but had to retreat due to the depth of the water.

He added that he was "alarmed" that the underpass had been flooded since February 9 and that teams had not been in attendance to clear the flood and that they did not understand how important these routes were to local residents.

Following discussions, the group were informed by Highways England that workers would be arriving on site later that day to pump out the underpass.

Later that day, not only was the St Paul's Road underpass cleared, but that the underpass on the A36 underpass had also been pumped out too.

The team wish to express their thanks to the teams from Highways England and would ask any residents that use these routes to report any flooding in the underpasses directly to Highways England on 0300 125 5000 or via email ha_info@highwaysengland.co.uk