FOUR officials from the Environment Agency travelled from various parts of the south west to Crudwell last night to tell hundreds of angry people from villages around Malmesbury that the agency would do nothing to prevent further flooding in the area.

They said that even if they had the money the relatively small numbers of people and properties affected determined that the villages were way down at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Richard Simons, the agency's flood risk manager for the area, told the stunned meeting of the Malmesbury Area 1 committee of North Wiltshire District Council that the Environment Agency was under no statutory obligation to carry out any flood prevention work at all.

Almost 200 people, many of whose homes had been flooded three times in the past 12 months, crowded into Crudwell Village Hall for the meeting where flooding in the Malmesbury area was top of the agenda.

Facing a decidedly hostile assembly, other bodies represented at the meeting included Wiltshire County Council and Wessex Water.

At the end of the two-hour debate on the issue, the district council pledged £14,500 to the action group looking into the issue but the miserable message for residents was that funds for work to cure the flooding problems would have to be raised locally.

The district council is to issue residents with a regular bulletin of the progress of the working group.

Anyone who wishes to receive the bulletin should email communications@northwilts.gov.uk

For the full story see next Thursday's Standard.