Yesterday as storms and torrential rain swept across Somerset a number of roads were closed. Somerset Council put out a press release at 4.15pm several hours after the first flooding started, to let people know some (but not all) of the roads that had been closed for flooding.

The Police website referred to the flooding in general terms. Their feed on X (formerly known as Twitter) showed the Environment Agency warnings – but not actual road closures.

Somerset Council have a travel map where you can plan ahead and look at road closured due to road works, but it doesn’t include flooding.

But if you wanted to set out and avoid the roads that were closed, and had been known to be closed for some time, there was no central point of information. The various authorities, just as in 2014, had different bits of the picture, but there was no one in overall control.

Nothing excuses people driving into flood waters after roads have been closed. But the frustration of motorists finding roads closed without warning is understandable. If you are setting out on a journey and you know the weather is bad and flooding likely there needs to be a central point of reference.

And there isn’t. Nearly a decade after the very same thing was promised in a meeting in 2014 in Langport, nothing has been done. Somerset Council can complain today that there’s no money left. But they have had a decade to sort this out. And they haven’t.