UPDATE: Repairs start to damaged sewer that caused Skegness schoolground to flood

Children at the Richmond School were given the afternoon off on Wednesday due to the amount of water surrounding the building making access difficult.

Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue were called to Richmond Drive just after 8am and Anglian Water remained at the school in the evening pumping it into a tanker and transferring it into a drain on the opposite side of the road.

The school was back open on Thursday but there were concerns the flooding had been caused by a problem with the drain rather than just the quantity of rainfall responsible for surface water problems across the rest of the town.

Fire crews were called to a number of locations around the Skegness area to deal with excess water.

A crew from Skegness was called to Roman Bank, Wainfleet, was called to Skegness Road, Ingoldmells, and Alford was called to Parsons Lane to deal with flooding there.

An Anglian Water spokesperson said: “We have a damaged surface water sewer outside Richmond School in Skegness. In the persistent, heavy rainfall on Wednesday it meant the water couldn’t drain away quite as fast as usual. Only the outside of the school was affected, but we are sorry for this.

“The surface water has now been pumped away from the school grounds and the school reopened yesterday (Thursday).

“The repair to the surface water sewer will begin today and our teams will be working over the weekend to complete the repair by early next week. There will be some traffic management in place on Richmond Drive while our engineers are working. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes and our teams will be working to have things back to normal as soon as possible.”

“This surface water sewer is not linked to the other areas of Skegness which saw some surface water flooding on Wednesday . Unfortunately, these areas were affected by the sheer volume of rainfall, and falling on hard dry ground too, which can cause additional run-off.”

Mrs Caroline Wellsted, headteacher at The Richmond School, would like to thank the Skegness fire crew for saving the School from a potential flood.

Mrs Wellsted said: “The health, safety and well being of pupils and staff is paramount and we tried to remain open as usual, for as long as possible. This primarily was to not disrupt the pupils’ education and learning.

“However, as the situation worsened I asked my staff and Skegness Fire Officers to create a safe departure for our pupils.”