Borough in flood after deluge

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Butterworth Hall, Milnrow

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Flooding is affecting many parts of the Borough as well as Rochdale town centre.

Milnrow and Littleborough are both badly affected, as is Queen's Park in Heywood.

The Borough has been battered by a month's rain in a few hours.

Councillor Allen Brett, Labour councillor for Milnrow & Newhey, said: "I realise the Borough is being deluged but parts of Milnrow and Newhey are suffering and one of the worst affected areas in the Butterworth Hall area."

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk has laid the blame at the door of the Environment Agency, he said: "“Our top priority at the moment is to ensure the health and safety of Rochdale residents at this difficult time.

“I think there are serious lessons to be learned by the Environment Agency, which has repeatedly ignored warnings from local people that flooding on this scale was likely to happen.

“The Government’s massive budget cuts have left the Environment Agency as a remote and impotent organisation which is unable to respond sufficiently when risks like this occur.

“We now need urgent investment in order to get necessary work done and get the infrastructure in place to prevent something like this from happening again.

“I will be raising this issue in Parliament as a matter of urgency at the earliest opportunity.”

However, anger is also being directed at Rochdale Borough Council by residents, John Arnold said: "The Council's response to the floodings has been non-existent. This is a significant and major incident that has occurred within our town. The Council's website is down and has been for some time. This is disgraceful and I am disgusted by the so called Leadership team!"

The three main rivers in the borough, the Roch, Beal and Spodden have all burst their banks in numerous locations.