'Vigilance' urged as county battles floods

Authorities are urging residents to remain "vigilant" after a week of "exceptional" rainfall left parts of Oxfordshire flooded.

Heavy rain on Thursday evening and into Friday caused travel disruption in the county, with rail lines and some roads still heavily affected by the flooding.

It comes after more than a month’s worth of rain fell in the space of 36 hours overnight on Sunday and into Monday.

The week of wet weather has left many homes submerged by water - with some people facing huge clean-up operations.

Six flood warnings issued by the Environment Agency (EA) for areas near Kidlington, Bampton and Chiselhampton remain in place.

The agency said river levels were still high on parts of the River Thames and it was expecting some properties to be flooded.

Councillor Pete Sudbury, Oxfordshire County Council’s deputy leader, said: “We and our partner agencies have been doing a tremendous amount of hard work in the past week to seek to deal with the impacts of the huge levels of rainfall to which we and neighbouring counties have been subjected."

“Even if it were possible or affordable, replacing all of our drainage pipes with bigger ones, they won’t work when a month’s rain can fall in a couple of hours.

“There’s a much wider landscape-scale and street-by-street operation needed locally and nationally to work out how you hold back rainwater wherever it lands, slowing down the rate at which it hits or flows down our streets, rivers and highways."

He added that in the meantime the council would do "whatever is possible" when extreme weather events occur, and ensure it would be "learning from each one".

In a statement, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon Layla Moran said she had met with residents who had been affected by this week's flooding.

She said she had contacted relevant agencies to "ask for urgent support" for people in Abingdon, having seen the "devastating impact" of the floods.

In a similar tone to Mr Sudbury, she looked to the future, saying the floods “demonstrate why we don’t have time to spare on constructing better flood defences in Oxfordshire".

"For local people who woke up to water in their homes, existing protections offered too little, too late," she added

Network Rail said flooding between Bicester North and Banbury had blocked all lines, with disruption expected until the end of the day.

David Heathfield, head of corporate affairs at Chiltern Railways, said it had been a "very challenging morning on the rail lines".

He told BBC Radio Oxford there were "big patches" of both standing and running water above the level of the rails between Banbury and Bicester, meaning it was "obviously not safe to run services".

The water had begun to recede, Mr Heathfield said, and the line would "hopefully" reopen in the "near future".

Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service has also urged motorists not to drive through floodwater, and said many highways had been affected.

Homes across Oxfordshire were left with flood damage after parts of the county saw more than 10cm (4ins) of rain fall over Sunday and Monday.

Graham Scholey, a biodiversity technical specialist at the EA, said the rainfall on Thursday night was likely to cause river levels to rise in Upper Cherwell.

"With a dry day forecast for tomorrow, we're hoping it'll give a chance for this pulse of floodwater to move through the system," he said.

"We just need to be vigilant and we'll obviously be monitoring levels very closely."

Darren Butler, from Kidlington, has been told by his insurance company that he and his family would have to move out of their property for six months while it was made safe after it flooded on Monday.

In the meantime, the father of four is having to find a suitable place for him and his family to move in to during the clean-up.

"Letting agents are absolutely overwhelmed at the moment, and the properties that we've asked about, the ones that are available for six-month lets have got maybe four, five, six people looking at the same one," he said.

"It's a bun fight now to to get somewhere - certainly locally - so we may end up having to go further afield."

The BBC spoke to letting agents in the Kidlington area who said finding short-term lets in the area was not easy at the best of times.

They added there was nowhere near the supply of properties needed to meet the demand, and since the floods on Monday they had been getting more calls from families who needed somewhere to go.

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