Drains are neglected

Despite Cllr Adams's blandishments and wordy reassurances, John Howell's letter of August 13 was very close indeed to the truth about Dudley Council's gully-cleaning vehicles, or rather lack of them.

I went to the central area committee meeting on September 11 to raise the issue of blocked drains in my area and to ask how many gully-cleaning vehicles Dudley has.

The answer was that there are two – a new one recently purchased and an old one that had recently been refurbished. I'm surprised that Cllr Adams didn't use this to claim that the fleet had doubled, as indeed it had statistically.

Realistically it is quite clear that, despite all the blandishments both from Cllr Adams and those I heard at the meeting, our road drains have been almost totally neglected for several years and this summer's flooding was the consequence.

It now seems certain that due to climatic changes we can expect more such problems, so Dudley must rapidly implement a regular drain clearing programme. More money should be spent on essential services like this and less on grandiose but often pointless schemes.

Amusingly, the very morning after the meeting, while I was still having breakfast, a gully cleaning vehicle appeared and cleaned all the drains in my immediate area.

I have marked this on my calendar and wonder how long it will be before it happens again.

The moral must be to complain, since, to use an old Black Country saying, "It's the squakin' whale wot gets the grase."