Flood warnings: Storm Bert brings more travel disruption with more than 150 flood warnings in place

Steve Knibbs
BBC West, reporting from Tenbury Wells

They are used to flooding here – if you can ever get used to it.

I’m standing by the River Teme on the bridge going into Tenbury Wells. The water’s pretty swollen still this morning but it wasn’t the river that caused the problem yesterday.

There was this local brook and the water was rising so quickly and there was so much pressure that it caused the wall that was holding it back collapsed sending water gushing into the street in seconds, all along market streets, shops, business affected yet again – as you can see below.

This is one of those areas that has been earmarked for a flood defence scheme. Costs have been rising over recent times. The latest estimate was over £7m and the environment agency are looking at ways to work on that a bit smarter to bring the price down.

People here are just upset for the shops and businesses, with this happening just a month before Christmas – it’s a vibrant market town here.

There’s just thick silt and mud across the street. There’s broken windows. It’s quite eerie actually, it’s very quiet.

They’re pumping water out of flooded basement along market streets. There are flood barriers up. Some worked, some didn’t. The clean-up operation is going to start again today.

There are people saying they’ve lost their life’s work, their business is destroyed, yet again by the flooding here which is happening more often than ever before.