Flood Risk Drainage Exmouth | Don't Wait for the Council

Devon County Council approved a £2.7 million Flood Risk Management Action Plan on 11 March 2026. Exmouth is named explicitly as a priority location for drainage studies and flood improvement schemes. That sounds like good news. It is, eventually. But if you own a property in Littleham, Brixington, Withycombe Raleigh, or anywhere else in EX8 that went underwater during Storm Chandra last year, 'eventually' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

What the action plan actually says

The plan covers 2026/27 and was triggered by two bruising winters. Storm Chandra flooded over 180 properties across Devon. Early 2026 alone hit 50-plus locations. The council's cabinet has responded by committing money to drainage studies, flood modelling, and improvement works, with Exmouth among the explicitly named towns.

That is a real commitment. I'm not dismissing it. Surface-water drainage in parts of Exmouth is genuinely overwhelmed when the rain comes in hard off the Channel, and some of that is infrastructure the council owns and needs to fix.

But here's the honest read: a cabinet approval in March 2026 means studies commissioned later this year, findings reported, schemes designed, consulted on, tendered, and then built. The optimistic end of that timeline is 2028. The realistic end is further out. Meanwhile, the next wet autumn is September.

What the camera actually shows

I run CCTV surveys across Exmouth and the surrounding EX postcodes, including Lympstone, Topsham, Woodbury, and Budleigh Salterton. When I put a camera down a lateral drain after a flood complaint, the findings rarely point to a broken council main. They point to the private drain that connects the property to it.

Typical findings on a post-flood survey:

• A belly, where a section of pipe has sagged and is holding standing water permanently
• Cracked or displaced joints letting silt and fine gravel migrate in over years until the bore is half-blocked
• Root ingress, usually from garden trees or boundary hedges, building a fibrous mat that catches everything else
• A gully pot that hasn't been cleared in five years, sitting full of sediment within six inches of the grate

None of those failures are in the council's plan. None of them get fixed by a flood improvement scheme. They sit in the private section of your drainage system, which is your responsibility, and they're the reason your property floods while the neighbours stay dry.

The council can improve the main sewer capacity on Salterton Road or the surface-water channels near the Maer. That work won't do much if your gully outfall is 80 percent blocked with decomposed leaf matter.

The pre-emptive case

A CCTV drain survey gives you a condition report with footage: you see exactly what's there, not a guess based on symptoms. If the camera finds nothing, you've bought certainty and that's genuinely worth something before another winter. If it finds a belly or root ingress, you have a clear diagnosis and can get it fixed before the next flood event.

High-pressure water jetting clears the partial blockages and silt build-up that contribute to surface-water backing up. Root cutting and descaling deal with the fibrous mats. Drain relining can seal cracked joints without excavation, and remedial work of that kind carries a 20-year guarantee.

That's not me selling work for the sake of it. A blocked lateral during a storm doesn't respect the timing of the council's drainage study. The two things, public flood scheme and private drain maintenance, need to happen in parallel, not sequence.

The practical ask

If your property in Exmouth or the surrounding villages sits in a spot that's taken surface water in recent winters, a survey now makes sense. Not because the council's plan is wrong. Because the council's plan addresses public infrastructure, and your lateral drain is not public infrastructure.

The action plan is a good thing. It just isn't your thing to wait for.

Drainsco covers Exmouth and the EX postcodes, with engineers available 24/7. There's no call-out fee, and you'll have a clear price before any work starts. If you want to know what a camera would actually find under your property, the number is on the site.