Northumberland Spine Road flooding a result of high tides and wet weather 'perfect storm', council says

The A189 Spine Road between Blyth and Cramlington was closed on Tuesday after a spell of heavy rain saw vehicles trapped in flash flooding. Council workers were forced to dig ditches in a bid to divert the excess water.

The local authority was criticised for failing to maintain gullies in the area, meaning the water could not drain away. However, council officers have since confirmed that the gullies were in fact cleaned in recent weeks.

Instead, the flooding was put down to a combination of factors including high tides.

Director of local services Paul Jones said: “It was not caused by a lack of maintenance. The gullies on that part of the highway had only just recently been cleaned out and were fully functioning.

“What happened was a perfect storm, a series of events all coinciding at the same time. We had extremely wet weather running into this week and it has been for a couple of months now, so all the ground in that river catchment is just absolutely saturated.

“Any water that lands on these fields just runs straight onto the highway network. On that day, unfortunately, we had the best part of three inches of rain, which very quickly ran onto the highways.

“The floods were also connected with the high spring tide in the River Blyth. When the tide is high the outflows get backed up, so there was a massive amount of water going onto the roads with nowhere for it to go because the network was already backed up.

“Teams did an excellent job to look at alternative means to block off some of the water and dug a ditch to try and release some of the flooding. Ultimately nature takes its course and when the tide dropped water levels dropped very quickly.”

Mr Jones said the situation was unprecedented in at least three decades. However, he warned that such events could become more common due to climate change.

He continued: “We have not seen anything like that in over 30-odd years but we have not been complacent with climate change.

"These weather events are getting more frequent and we are undertaking work to see what we can do to prevent any occurrence and to make sure our resilient road network stays that way despite the weather.”

Councillors from Cramlington spoke of their shock at the scenes on the Spine Road.

Cllr Wayne Daley, who represents the Cramlington North ward said: “The amount of rain was quite unprecedented. People were saying the council has not cleaned the gullies. If everybody says that the first thing I do is check the facts.

“A few weeks before the gullies had been cleaned. There was a whole series of factors which made that road susceptible to that volume of water.”

Cllr Mark Swinburn, who represents Cramlington Village ward, added: “It was horrendous. The land is so heavy and saturated because we have had so much rainfall.

“The drains were cleared only a month ago. It is not through a lack of care and maintenance, it was so much rain. It was just one of those things.”