DOZENS of major roadwork schemes will take place in East Surrey over the next five years as Surrey County Council continues to recover from the winter floods.
The works are part of a multimillion-pound road redevelopment scheme by the council which will see miles of roads improved across Reigate and Banstead and Tandridge, and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on reinforcing damaged roads and bridges.
East Surrey was left in chaos at the turn of the New Year as storms and floods battered transport networks, submerging homes, roads and bridges and causing major disruption on railways.
Following the floods, the county council set up a taskforce to review how services responded to the storms and to decide what improvements need to be put in place for the future.
As part of a 38.5-mile programme of work, 3.7 miles of road will be improved in Reigate and Banstead and 1.2 miles in Tandridge. Additional funding will be provided to repair major damage to 1.25 miles of Croydon Road in Tandridge.
The council also aims to tackle 13 major "wet spots" across Surrey. Up to £250,000 will be spent on improving drainage to the carriageway and properties in Outwood Lane, Chipstead; £100,000 will go on flood alleviation works to the carriageway and properties in Brighton Road, Banstead; while £150,000 will be spent on flood alleviation and safety improvements to the roundabout at Tattenham Corner Road.
Godstone Road in Whyteleafe and Woldingham Road in Woldingham will each receive £200,000 for "capacity improvement".
In addition, cash will be spent on repairing structures across the area. A total of £900,000 has been set aside for Flanchford Bridge in Leigh after part of it was washed away during the Christmas Eve storm, while Chart Lane Tower in Reigate is set to receive "safety and restoration" works.
Tim Hall, a Surrey county councillor, was one of the members interviewed by the taskforce.
He told the Mirror: "We went through some of the things that worked and some of the things that didn't.
"We need better warnings and we need an Environment Agency study to tell us what caused a lot of the flooding because we still don't know what caused so much water to be in the system."
He added that one of the reasons the situation was so severe was that high winds caused a number of trees to collapse into the road, which added to the chaos.
He said: "Our feeling is there's a lot of work going on, a lot of work has been done and a lot of work still needs to be done."
The plans are set to go before the county council's environment and transport select committee today (Thursday), with a progress report being presented to the council at the start of next year.
