Planning ahead
If your property is known to be under threat from flooding you are advised to look at installing purpose made defences.
These are in the form of barriers, gates, doors, air brick covers etc. that can be permanently fixed to the property and help to reduce water entry.
For more information go to the Environment Agency (external link), the Flood Protection Association (external link) and National Flood Forum (external link) websites.
At the very least its advisable to keep a supply of sandbags and clean sand. There are also bags available that contain a gel which when soaked in water for between 3 and 10 minutes expand to form a sand bag shape and do the same job. These have the advantage of being lighter to transport and since they are vacuum packed into small parcels are easier to store.
However sandbags or gel bags are only a useful short term measure to try and keep floodwater from entering property.
Sandbags
In an emergency Wigan Council will try to assist our residents who are under immediate danger of being flooded by supplying filled sandbags in the following circumstances:
- To homes most at risk of flooding in Flood Warning Area GM1 (River Douglas near Wigan centre) when an officially declared flood warning has been issued.
- To homes in immediate danger of being flooded, with priority being given to residents who cannot help themselves.
In the GM27 and GM28 flood warning areas (Penleach Brook at Higher Fold and Lilford Park Brook at Lilford) an arrangement has been made where the Council will help transport sandbags (supplied by the Environment Agency) within the points in the flood warning area. Environment Agency sandbags are released when a flood warning for Lilford Basin area is declared.
We are able to maintain a small supply of ready filled sandbags and gel bags for immediate use and will deploy available teams to take them to the areas under immediate threat of flooding. We will also deploy some resources to filling additional sandbags.
Our limited resources will be targeted at occupied premises where there is a threat to life, or there is immediate danger of internal flooding. We will also prioritise the delivery of sandbags to the locations where they will be most useful in protecting groups of houses rather than individual properties.
Commercial premises are expected to assess their own risk and make arrangements for their own flood protection.
Requesting sandbags from the Council in an emergency
- Residents in properties identified as ‘most in need’ will be prioritised for receipt of sandbags. The usual number delivered is 12 along with a plastic sheet. It would normally be expected that you would place the sandbags yourself.
- If your property is already flooded, sandbags will be of no use and you should concentrate your efforts on protecting yourself, your belongings and moving any precious items.
- Please do not request sandbags if there is no immediate danger of your home flooding, or if only your garage or garden is flooded or under threat. This diverts our limited resources from more urgent requests. If the risk of house flooding is considered to be low, no sandbags will be left.
Please see contact details below.
Need help in placing sandbags?
If you are unable to lift and move sandbags and don’t have anyone who can help you please let us know when making your request. We will do our best to provide assistance (subject to demand at the time).
Placement of sandbags
Sandbags are heavy and even heavier when wet. To protect a normal front door from 8” / 20cm of water, you will need 6 sandbags and a sheet of plastic approximately 6’ 6” / 2m wide and 5’ / 1.5m high.
Disposal of sandbags
Please do not put sandbags in your wheelie bin, they are heavy and your bin will then not be emptied.
Contaminated sandbags should be disposed of at a household recycling centre.
