A SOUTHEND road was turned into a river after just ten minutes of rain raising fears about how the town copes with heavy downpours.

The short downpour was enough to put seafront traders on high alert and led to Thorndon Park Drive looking more like Venice than Belfairs, after a drain backed up, flooding the road.

Councillor Kevin Robinson, whose back garden in Brightwell Avenue was filled with sewage after flooding last month, saw a drain cover gushing water out of it outside the Cricketers pub, on London Road during Tuesday’s deluge.

Surface water also gathered on the seafront making traders rush to install their flood barriers to protect their businesses.

Ye Olde Chippy on the corner of Marine Parade and Pleasant Road has been flooded three times in the past, and while owner George Zinonos’s flood barrier prevented the chippy being flooded, water still made its way into his storeroom.

He said: “It wasn’t enough to ruin anything, thankfully, because everything is on palettes, but we are always under threat here and before I put the barriers in this week, we’ve had to shut the shop a number of times over the past fewweeks.

“I think we’ve been lucky the last two times, because the tide has always been out but it’s a bit of a lottery. Whenever it rains like this the surface water runs towards my shop.”

Belfairs councillor Stephen Aylen said the flooding in Thorndon Park Drive was the result of a long-standing issue with the drains in the area.

He said: “It’s a problem that’s been occurring for about three years and it’s getting worse with the heavy rain. This time it was only the road that flooded, but in the past the water has been up to people’s bay windows and often with foul water.

“It’s an issue across the Belfairs Garden estate.”

The councillor responsible for public protection, Martin Terry, said the town was “lucky” the downpour only lasted as long as it did.

He said: “We had a lucky escape. This could have been a lot worse if it had gone on any longer.

“We are getting this kind of rainfall every August and September now, but the issue is the Government and Anglian Water are treating it as a onein- 20-year occurrence when setting their pipe capacity.

“There needs to be a complete rethink about standard pipe sizes and we are pushing for Anglian Water to invest more in our town’s infrastructure.”