Chew Magna is one of the first villages to benefit from a new scheme to help South West communities prepare for future flooding. The village’s experienced team of flood wardens has received free specialist training through the new Communities Prepared project.

Sixteen local volunteer flood wardens attended the training at Chew Magna’s Millennium Hall on Saturday, 26th November, just days after localised flooding, caused by Storm Angus, resulted in two primary schools being closed and some of the area’s houses being evacuated.

Flood wardens are local volunteers who can help prevent flooding by reporting blocked drains and ditches, as well as responding to flood warnings by supporting vulnerable people and the emergency services.

Lynne Easton, Parish Councillor and Flood Warden Coordinator for Chew Magna, said: “After the 2012 floods in Chew Magna, it became clear we needed to coordinate the professional and volunteer support for the rapid response needed for our catchment area. As Coordinator, my role was to establish a team of neighborhood wardens for each of the ten zones and to develop a Flood Plan. The way we managed to get the village so quickly back to normal after the recent floods shows how much more resilient we are now.

“The Communities Prepared training has been terrific, and will help us ensure our volunteers are protected. It has also given us new knowledge in how the emergency services work and skills to tackle flooding. It has given us a lot of ideas of how we can work even better together in the future.”

A Big Lottery funded partnership between Groundwork, Cornwall Community Flood Forum and Cornwall College; Communities Prepared will support cities, towns and villages, from Gloucestershire to Cornwall, prepare for the unexpected. Working alongside the Environment Agency, the Project team supports local people to develop a flood plan and recruit and train a team of community wardens to respond to flooding and other emergencies. The flood warden training includes understanding flood risk, using sandbags and personal protective equipment, and working with the emergency services.

Cathryn Marcus of Communities Prepared said: “It was great to deliver this training to such a committed team of volunteers. The fact that the village had responded so swiftly and successfully to flooding just days earlier, shows just how important it is to be prepared. Our training and support will help villages, towns and cities across the South West region feel more confident that they are doing all they can to make themselves resilient against any possible future flooding.”

Rose Lloyd, Flood Resilience Advisor for the Environment Agency’s Wessex region that includes Chew Magna, also contributed to the training event. She said: “It is great to see the strong community spirit in Chew Magna; all credit must go to Lynne and the flood wardens for the hard work and dedication they put in as volunteers to make their community prepared for flooding.

“Working with the Communities Prepared project gives us extra capacity to support and empower flood wardens and community volunteers to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies safely and effectively.”

Liz Richardson (Conservative, Chew Valley North), the Bath and North East Somerset Council Cabinet Member for Homes and Planning, said: “As recent events have shown, it is important that individuals and communities are prepared to manage their flood risk in order to be more resilient to the impacts of flooding. What the community has achieved in Chew Magna is a fantastic demonstration of what can be accomplished when local people work together with conviction in order to deal with a real and present risk that affects the whole community.

“It’s great to see that the work achieved in Chew Magna is going from strength to strength and the support from Groundwork is a terrific boost for everyone involved. From the Council’s point of view, it’s great to know that there is such a robust plan in place. Well done to everyone involved.”