Going down the drains?

They were the pride of Victorian industrialisation, under nearly every town and city in Britain - old sewers are still responsible for draining rain water. Yet now the Prime Minister has launched an urgent review - into how much these sewers are to blame for the recent flooding.

At their last investigation in 2005 - the Severn Trent water company - which operates Gloucester and Tewksbury - calculated they had 35,000 miles of sewers in need of modernisation.

Evidence for this came last weekend as drains erupted and streets filled with sewage and industrial waste.

Down in Sussex the sewers under Brighton's seafront are away from overflowing rivers. But even here the old tunnels simply couldn't cope with the rain a week ago. In fact they are still building a £3.5m drainage system here just for freak floods.

On Brighton's beach there is a hidden hatch leading to a vast underground reservoir. It was designed to be used once every 75 years - if that. And wasn't supposed to be operational for months - but they came within a gasp of abandoning work - and opening the floodgates here last week.

Who maintains the drains?

Their new tunnels can drain 20,000 tonnes of water every second. Yet there is no legal duty for water companies to install them.

The Victorian sewers maybe part of Britain's heritage, but there's confusion over who exactly is monitoring them - The environment agency says it's responsible for flooding but not drainage.

And neither the water regulator nor the department for environment knows which sewers are causing problems.

But they all admit that flash floods are going to be more common in the future.

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