AS MANY West Oxfordshire residents and businesses know from bitter experience in recent years, floods can have a devastating effect.

We welcome the move by Witney residents to create a group to help step up efforts to improve the town’s flood defences in conjunction with West Oxfordshire District Council and other bodies, including the Environment Agency.

The area has been badly affected by flooding over the past decade, with July 2007 being a particularly difficult time, when the Windrush and Evenlode rivers were swollen by torrential rain and swamped more than 1,600 homes and 72 businesses.

The district council, alongside Oxford-shire County Council, the Environment Agency, Thames Water and the Department for Environment has worked since then to improve flood defences in West Oxfordshire, with more than £1m being secured for various projects, along with a programme of work to clear ditches, gullies, culverts and flood channels.

It looks as though this work, along with some merciful breaks in the recent heavy rainfall, have spared our communities from such destruction again. As some residents have said, it could have been worse.

But that won’t ease the worries of businesses in vulnerable locations, such as the Witney Glass Company.

By working together, residents, business owners and the council can help to minimise future flooding in the town.

We hope the worst has now passed and Witney and the other communities along West Oxfordshire’s rivers can start to assess this week’s problems and plan for better protection against floods that seem to be becoming an annual event.