Published February 1, 2016 at 15:37
Rossendale Borough Council would like to thank all residents, business owners, local groups and volunteers for their help, support and assistance during the Boxing Day floods and in the aftermath.
We would also like to thank our local partners for the help and assistance they have provided during these events; Lancashire County Council, the Environment Agency, Lancashire Police, Lancashire Fire and Rescue and United Utilities.
Cllr Alyson Barnes, Leader of Rossendale Borough Council said; “The floods have had a devastating impact upon the lives of our local residents and the livelihoods of our local businesses. We have worked hard alongside other agencies and local volunteers to make sure that we keep those affected as informed as possible about the clean-up and grant funding they are eligible for. I would like to personally thank everyone, on behalf of the Council, for their help and support, it was invaluable.”
Stuart Sugarman, Chief Executive of Rossendale Borough Council stated; “The response of our local communities was wonderful and very heart-warming, it showed the amazing community spirit Rossendale has. All agencies have worked extremely hard to support our communities and get residents and businesses back on their feet.”
The generosity of Rossendale residents during the floods in offering their homes, supplies and general assistance was overwhelming.
We ran 3 popular and successful flood drop in session in the immediate aftermath of the floods, at Futures Park and out in our STAN the Van. We were able to provide advice and information to people affected on cleaning up, applying for funding options open to them if they are not insured and generally support our communities in their time of need.
Our Operations Team worked on helping those affected clear their damaged items. Residents have taken the time, despite their turmoil, to contact us thanking our teams for their help, which has been appreciated.
Out staff also hand-delivered information leaflets to affected properties on clean up and grant funding, they then delivered the £500 Council grant and Council Tax/Business Rate Relief scheme information.
We’re now working on making sure people apply for the resilience funding and that we support people in this process. We are aware that many people who were affected are not online and so we’ve been working to make provision for those situations and support them as much as we can.
Moving forward now we continue to support those affect and we want to encourage residents and business to apply for grant funding that is open to them and in particular apply for the resilience funding so that should an event like this ever happen again we will have more “flood proof” provisions in our communities.
Filed under : agencies | community | flooding | local | rossendale | support | volunteers