Town on the brink of another flooding disaster

Fourteen months ago, a wellington-booted Tony Blair stood on the stone bridge spanning the river Severn at Bewdley, assuring those whose homes and businesses had been flooded that everything was being done to help them.

Yesterday, after more heavy rain and a weekend forecast of more to come, the town is again living on the edge. The Severn is running worryingly high and locals are stocking up on sandbags and other improvised devices for fear that the river will again overflow.

Hundreds were evacuated in the flooding of 2000, which was the worst to strike Bewdley since 1947. Mr Blair – whose visit to the town was the first by a Prime Minister since Stanley Baldwin's, more than 60 years ago – promised to take action to relieve the misery. Many, however, feel that little progress has been made with his undertaking.

One of those to have buttonholed Mr Blair as he was being harangued by locals over the closure of casualty department in nearby Kidderminster General Hospital – among other issues – was Mark Leadbetter. His riverside gallery opened the day before the flood struck on 4 November and forced him to close for three weeks. Mr Leadbetter – who has had a miserable 14 months, in which the company balance sheet has reflected the costs of enforced closure and repair – is filled with gloom as he watches the current race past, only inches below the river's bank.

Earlier in the week, the Environment Agency phoned to warn him that heavy rains in the Welsh mountains, which will flow into the upper reaches of the Severn and Vyrnwy Rivers, had led to the issue of another flood warning for Bewdley. The prospect of rain over the coming days has compounded the sense of danger.

"The Environment Agency have kept us well informed and there has definitely been a momentum created by Mr Blair's visit," Mr Leadbetter said. "[But] that will be of little consolation if we're hit again and we have to put all the paintings back into storage."

If the Severn overflows with anything resembling the ferocity of November 2000 – when it rose more than six yards above summer levels – then Mr Leadbetter and his neighbours on either side of the river will be at the mercy of nature, because much of the remedial work is incomplete.

A team of about 12 construction workers is still at the pile-driving stage of a £6.6m flood defence project funded by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The scheme, which is based on a system pioneered in Germany, is not due to be completed until July this year.

The Environment Agency rejected a plan for a dam, dredging and upstream storage lake and opted instead for the 650-yard concrete barrier, which runs 20ft under the river and is intended not only to prevent damage to sewage systems and the foundations of buildings but also to preserve the character of the area.

Other businesses complained that once Mr Blair had left the scene they were left to beat local bureaucracy in their fight for survival. The Wye Forest District Council assiduously pursued business rate collection to cover the period of closure, they claimed. Jackie Smith, an assistant at a riverside café, which was flooded to waist height, said: "All we asked for was three skips so we could clear up all the debris, but they never arrived."

Meanwhile, many of the affected residents have been a model of self-help. The National Flood Forum was established in Bewdley by two residents – Peter Barnett, whose home on the north bank was ruined, and Gillian Holland, whose 400-year-old Jacobean cottage ended up under several feet of water. Last June, the group organised a "flood defence fair" in the town, to which companies selling anti-flood devices were invited. The forum, which has a budget of £82,000, promotes the work via a website for the benefit of other flood-hit communities.

When repairs to a dozen homes on the town's north bank, in which plaster was replaced with rendering and wooden floors with terracotta, were completed in August, the group threw a party, although Mr Barnett concedes it may not be the last. The forum also offers advice to victims fighting the financial fallout of the floods.

The insurance excess on riverside homes – many of which are timbered Jacobean structures that have survived scores of floods – has been increased by up to £10,000, and there were reports of one policy being rescinded altogether.

Property prices have also fallen. A four-bedroomed home with a courtyard valued at £180,000 before the flood is now worth an estimated £160,000.

Mr Barnett, who was forced to move to temporary accommodation for four months with his wife and two children, said most people in Bewdley, which has been flooded 100 times in the past century, were stoical.

Last night the local and district councils met to discuss the Environment Agency's flood warning and the lessons learnt from the past 14 months.

Mr Barnett said: "We are all pretty experienced and it won't take much more to push the river over the top. But everyone's got their own way of dealing with it by now."