**Flooding, ice and drainage**
I've had loads of comments along the lines of "this wouldn't be happening if the drainage were better" over the last few days in relation to the road problems we are encountering.
I hope it's helpful therefore to explain what the situation is.
The sustained rain of the last couple of months has meant that ground water levels are at exceptionally high levels. That means that the ground can hold no more water and explains why water is running along and across roads in many places and standing in the fields.
Ditches are designed largely to take water off surrounding surfaces, some drain into nearby water courses, but many hold it while it soaks into the soil. If however ground water levels are high then that happens far less quickly, if at all, and indeed the ditches can fill with ground water without run off. That is what has been happening in a lot of places and explains much of the standing water on the roadside.
On the A3057 the problem for example is water coming off the field and full ditch on one side of the road and flowing into the road from a utility manhole on the other - the manhole being full of ground water.
The purpose of drainage is of course to take the water away and in very many places it succesfully does. The late leaf fall didn't help us this year coming as it did half way through the gully clearing programme.
Finally, you might reasonably say 'stop filling in ditches' - I wish we had the power to stop landowners doing so, sadly we don't. We just have to deal with the consequences when they do.