RESIDENTS of a village near Bridgwater have come together to campaign to Somerset Council in regards to a key road which has regularly flooded.

Woolavington locals attended a parish council meeting to once again raise the impacts caused by persistent flooding on Crancombe Lane.

The lane floods directly outside Woolavington Village Primary School, meaning pupils are forced to wade through 'filthy' flood water before and after school on a daily basis.

Locals describe a 'river' which runs down the lane when heavy rain hits the area, subsequently damaging nearby houses in the area.

Peter Hesketh, a Woolavington resident, has been campaigning for Somerset Council to take action for five years.

"Somerset Council will take no action and ignore emails and personal representations," he said.

"We keep pressuring as much as we can but nothing ever happens.

"If you want 15 minutes of the very important council's time you need to raise a petition with 5000 signatures - how can we ever get that?

"At the moment, this only affects the residents of Crancombe Lane - however, Tapps Lane and Church Lane are starting to flood.

"If the council keeps on there present course of zero maintenance, many more problems will arise and the costs will rise exponentially to correct the problems."

Somerset Council has since responded to the pleas from Woolavington locals, and cited an existing unsatisfactory chamber/culvert underneath the road and excess surface run-off from surrounding land as reasons as to why the issue has not been resolved.

A spokesperson for Somerset Council said: "We understand the concerns of local people regarding this issue and our teams have been working with the parish council over a number of years to come up with a solution.

"The problem is not straight-forward and involves a number of different parties and landowners, each of whom have riparian responsibilities.

"The situation is made worse by the fact that there is an existing chamber/culvert underneath the road that is not able to cope with excessive run-off from land and ditches nearby, along with all the surface water from the road when we get significant rainfall.

"Our Flood and Coastal Management Team is continuing to look at the whole issue and is making contact with private landowners to inform them of their responsibilities to maintain their own drainage section.

"Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to increasing the capacity of the whole drainage system at Crancombe Lane and the land downstream, without a major and costly intervention."