Residents had to unblock pipe by hand after outflow pipe causes flooding in Bognor Regis

The issue was first reported in the early hours of the morning, when the residents of Barrack Lane and Canons Gate woke up to flooded homes, garages and roads.

"At four o’clock this morning, my neighbour was taken out of her house because all her electronics went,” said Tony Moore, a resident of Canons Gate. “She lives in a bungalow, and she’s totally flooded out. She was under about a foot of water inside the house. My garage was flooded too, as well as a number of others down the road. It was literally a few inches short of flooding all the houses. It was just chaos down here.”

It all stems, Tony and other residents say, from a blocked outflow pipe near the beach, which they had to unblock personally, after informing Southern Water of the issue. Tony was one of tree residents who, braving the harsh weather, headed down to the pipe to clear it by hand- a decision which almost went drastically wrong.

“We went down to the beach to unblock it, and we were nearly swept out to sea. I’m not joking when I say that. We literally only just managed to dive out of the way on to the stones as the water came rushing out. Thousands of litres of water came out all at once.”

Southern Water has been contacted for comment, and engineers have been on site to resolve the issues, but Tony was one of several residents to lay the blame squarely on its shoulders.

"It’s all because Southern Water haven’t maintained the pipe,” he explained, “and we were the people who had to unblock it.”