AT last a council officer has held up his hands and admitted that nothing much has been done since the floods in October 2000.

There has been so much talk about the apparent efforts taken to look into last year's disaster but, when the efforts are analysed, it seems the poor flood residents are in exactly the same position as the year before.

If we had a torrential downpour tomorrow and the River Roding burst its banks, hundreds of residents would find their homes under water once again.

Why is it that everything in this country seems to take so long to organise? It more often than not takes months for a criminal trial to take place, takes months and often years for inquiries to be held.

Likewise, it's now more than a year after the floods, and the agencies involved in flood defence have not achieved any solutions.

Residents up to now have been remarkably civil, but if the floods happen again, we believe that won't be the case.