The Environment Agency has expanded its flood warning service across Cheadle, Stockport and the Platt Bridge area of Wigan to ensure more people than ever across Greater Manchester are warned about any imminent risk of flooding.
The new flood warnings cover almost 800 homes and businesses and will see a warning message issued when flooding is forecast and then again to warn users if impacts are likely.
There are three types of warning – Flood Alert, Flood Warning and Severe Flood Warning.
Residents can register for the new service for free and choose to receive notifications via phone call (voice recording), text or email and by fully registering, people can also sign up to receive warnings for multiple locations.
Householders are encouraged to prepare if they receive a Flood Alert which could mean packing a bag that includes medicines, insurance documents and anything else they wouldn’t want to lose if flooding were to take place.
A Flood Warning calls on people to act now which means turning off gas, water and electricity and moving family and pets to safety. A Severe Flood Warning means you are in immediate danger and should follow advice from the emergency services.
Improving the service
The new flood warning areas have been added as part a result of new modelling and data - part of the Environment Agency’s drive to continually improve the flood warning service it provides across the country.
Several of the new locations to receive flood warnings were places that flooded over the New Year period.
Laila Berry, Flood Resilience Team Leader at the Environment Agency, said:
“We know all too well the devastating impact that flooding can have, which is why protecting people and communities is our top priority.
“Our staff use the latest technology to monitor rainfall, river and tide levels 24 hours a day to forecast flooding.
“The extension of our flood warning service will allow even more people across Stockport, Cheadle and Wigan to take action and stay safe if flooding is likely to occur.
“We would encourage all of those people in new flood warning areas to fully register their preferred details via Gov UK or Floodline for free, for both their safety and peace of mind.”
The accuracy of flood warnings improves over time as the Environment Agency gather more data and get a better understanding of how the river reacts to heavy rainfall. In the short term in new flood warning areas, there may be a higher than normal occurrence of false alarms, due to them always being issued on the side of caution.
There are now over 1.6 million users registered to receive flood warnings at the touch of a button across the country. The flood warnings are generated from river level data which is collected via an extensive monitoring network across England.
The data is combined with weather forecasts, river models and other information to produce location specific flood forecasts.
Home and business owners will be auto enrolled to the Flood Warning service via their mobile network.
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