CALSTOCK Parish Council has approved to spend £10,350 to recify the flooding issue in the village car park.

The money will be spent on underground valve works in the overflow car park.

The car park is subjected to flooding due to excess surface water that is accumulating and not draining.

Last autumn the parish council commissioned a survey of the car park to investigate why the water wasn’t draining and the results revealed that only one of the seven storm gullies had a non-return valve mechanism.

At the last council meeting, the amenities committee brought the proposal to full council to have the valve issue rectified and all councillors were in favour.

Councillor John Wells said: ‘Last year we commissioned Ray Stevens to carry out exploratory work to the gullies underneath the car park and the conclusion was that six of the seven high tide flaps no longer work.

‘So water is coming in and causing problems in the car park.’

Adding, ‘we budgeted £10,000 to cover the repairs and get this fixed once and for all.

‘It would also be nice to get it done before spring high tide.’

Councillor Alastair Tinto echoed Cllr Wells and said: ‘We need to get that car park sorted out.’

The amenities committee has the expectation that the underground works will resolve the matter and improve drainage of surface water in the car park.

Cllr Tinto said: ‘According to our contractor the installation of the non-return valves will remedy what he describes as ‘the tidal back flow flooding issue’ and then when that is done, hopefully within the next few weeks, we will then take stock of whether this has this actually solved the problem.’

Aside from the issue of the car park being prone to flooding, the uneven surface has also been a recent topic of discussion for the Council as it was deemed ‘dangerous’ last year.

In December, Councillor and Chair of the parish council, Jim Wakem described the car park as: ‘in a very dangerous state’.

The parish council took immediate action to address the issue and held an emergency meeting to remedy the problem of the village’s car park that had fallen into disrepair and posed as a potential danger to its users.

Parish councillors then met to assess the surface of the car park which had broken away in parts and councillors determined a ‘quick fix’ of laying hardcore as a temporary measure to make the car park safer to use.

Following the action that will be taken to resolve the drainage issue, it is hoped that this can then lead to a more permanent resolution of the uneven surface of the car park.

‘Once we’ve had the valves installed, we will then start thinking about what to do to make that car park decent because at the moment it’s a bit of an embarrassment’, said Cllr Tinto.

‘But until we’ve resolved this issue we’re not going to spend a lot of time and money on doing anything else because it will just go to waste.

‘If this problem is solved then we will look at what resurfacing might be required.’