A REVIEW of flood defence measures in West Craven is being carried out by Pendle Council following the weekend's storms.

The cellars and ground floors of homes in the Skipton Road, Victoria Street and Colne Road areas of Earby were flooded.

A pumping station designed to pump excess water from street drains into a nearby beck failed.

Earby councillor Doris Haigh arranged for council officers to review the flooding, which followed similar floods last year, to see what can be done in future.

She has also called on Yorkshire Water, which covers the area, to send a representative to meet councillors at the next meeting of the council's West Craven area committee on June 27.

After severe flooding last year in Kelbrook, preventative measures were taken and they helped ease the problem last weekend although some homes in Main Street were flooded again. "We have been keeping an eye out for this sort of weather for some time to see what would happen and find out if the arrangements for dealing with flooding had really improved," said Coun Haigh.

"I went along Skipton Road about 11pm on Saturday and spoke to Pendle Council workmen who were busy trying to keep the storm drains clear. They told me the water company had been out as well to check the pumping station at Lane Ends."

The station failed early on Sunday morning and it took Yorkshire Water engineers two hours to turn out and a further two hours to fix the problem, said Coun Haigh.

"It may be that the floods elsewhere in Yorkshire stretched them thin on the ground but there are clearly some unanswered questions.

"It is little comfort to our local residents who suffer damage and insurance costs on almost a regular annual basis to know how much worse things were elsewhere."