The Guardian reports that councils will have to cut key services to pay for the “soul-destroying” damage caused by three unprecedented storms across the UK, local leaders have said

Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin brought hurricane-force winds and heavy rain to large parts of the UK in the past week, leaving more than 1m homes without power and hundreds under water.

Local authorities said they faced multimillion-pound bills to clean up and repair damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure, at a time when many are making swingeing cuts to essential services due to a 37% drop in their government funding since 2010.

Council leaders complained about a lack of a long-term strategy from government about containing heavy rainfall upstream.

They said flood prevention strategies focused too often on relatively small areas instead of region-wide or cross-boundary mitigations. Paula Widdowson, a Lib Dem councillor and executive member for the environment on City of York council, urged the government to establish a £200-300m pot of emergency funding that areas could easily access during damaging storms.

Full article:

The Guardian - Councils ‘will have to cut key services to pay for UK storm damage’