TORRENTIAL rain caused chaos as a road was left "totally impassable" and sandbags placed outside homes to prevent flood water reaching them.

Frustrated residents have demanded a meeting with Anglian Water after heavy rain once again caused flooding under the railway bridge in Thorpe Hall Avenue and on Thorpe Esplanade.

Cars were forced to slow to a crawling pace to pass through the floodwater while water was also spotted spouting through the road in Thorpe Esplanade, on the seafront, near its junction with Thorpe Hall Avenue yesterday.

Anglian Water crews were on the scene on Thorpe Bay from 1.30pm yesterday, redirecting floodwater and placing sandbags outside properties to protect them from floodwater.

Andrew Hall, 59, speaking on behalf of the Thorpe Bay Residents Association, said: “This flooding shows the importance of having a residents meeting with Anglian water. We have all this planning work from people and all this building work but there is no infrastructure which is a big issue. We cannot keep building and not replace the infrastructure to cope.

“We do understand the complexity here, but we would like to help and solve this.

“We have people complaining about flooding issues frequently, in Thorpe Hall Close, where a lot of people in their eighties live.

“Simply shouting and screaming is not the answer, we need to sit at the table and get the issue recognised.”

Thorpe Hall Avenue resident, Frank Turvey, said: “This is terrible, there were cars getting stuck now on both sides of the road under the bridge. People are trying to tear through the water, it is absolutely ludicrous. This is the worst the flooding has ever been here.”

Yesterday afternoon, an Anglian Water spokesman said: “Our teams continue to work incredibly hard to keep our sewer network running despite the persistent bad weather we’ve seen this winter. In Southend the ongoing rainfall, combined with the already saturated ground, mean that we’re seeing widespread infiltration of excess water into our sewer network there is simply a lot of water with nowhere to go. While our network is operating the best it can, there’s much less room for the sewage, which can cause flooding.”