'We’ve pulled ourselves together', says Tenbury Wells business - a year on from town's November 2024 floods
The town centre was flooded last November when rainfall from Storm Bert led to the Kyre Brook bursting its banks and causing a wall to collapse, which has since been rebuilt
A year on since Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire suffered significant flooding and a business has said they've managed to 'pull themselves together' following it.
It was on the 24 November last year when rainfall from Storm Bert led to the Kyre Brook, which runs through the town, bursting its banks and causing a wall to collapse, leading to businesses being flooded in the centre and on Teme Street.
The wall was rebuilt by Worcestershire County Council in March who said it acted as a 'good neighbour' as the owner of the wall could not be identified.
Rachel Rogers from Nature's Design Studio who are based on Market Street and have been for around seven years has said there is still a worry they could be flooded again but they are focused on carrying on with business.
"My stomach goes upside down every time I get alerts on my phone that there's a flood warning," she said.
"But you've got to be stoic and you've just got to pick yourself up as a business and keep going, we know that Tenbury floods so we have to prepare ourselves.
"We’ve pulled ourselves together and got ourselves back up and running, there’s still things in the showroom that need to be done but we're up and running again and we've got orders on the books so we feel things are a little bit better."
Rogers has also praised the community for coming together in the way it helped each other prepare for Storm Claudia.
"Everybody helps everybody, with the last flood warning that we had people were putting sandbags on the properties that hadn't got any, local people were helping some of the companies and homeowners out putting sandbags out for everybody." she said.
"When I look back at what happened in Monmouth just recently, their shops had flood defences, but it went over the flood defences, which then that frightened me a little bit because have I built mine up high enough?"
Environment Agency 'committed' to improving area's flooding resilience
The Environment Agency have said over £17 million had been originally allocated to a built flood defence scheme, but following a review of proposals a funding gap was identified and plans were unable to further progress at this stage.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “We recognise the distressing impact that flooding has had on Tenbury Wells over the last 5 years, especially for the local independent businesses.
“We remain committed to improving flooding resilience in the area and we are working with all partners to achieve this.”
Charles Chandler from their West Mildands team added: "There's been a huge amount of work that's been undertaken since last year, we've invested a lot of money in natural flood management measures that have been stored along the Kyre Brook and we've also got over 140 properties signed up for interest in property flood resilience measures.
"We've already started individual property surveys which is where we go into each individual property, We look at how the property is built, what opportunities there could be to reduce flood water accessing it and then we identify the right products and look to install those in the near future.
"There's also a lot of ongoing natural flood management works also in the wider Kyre Brook and across the River Teme catchment as well, all things that are designed to reduce flows and reduce flood risk in Tenbury and from what we saw with Storm Claudia, it looks like those measures have really helped reduce levels."