LAST winter’s flooding, as we all well remember, was a serious and widespread problem that affected, in the main, large parts of the south and west of the city.

And it is quite understandable that the clean up was not going to be just a matter of waiting for the water to subside and sending around a man with a mop to soak up any last remnants.

But it is concerning that Oxford City Council was using the floods as an excuse for why it was failing to hit its own targets for clean streets five months later.

As we report today, in July the council regarded six per cent of roads it inspected as being dirty. Its target is just three per cent.

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Neighbours in some of those streets are still unhappy two months on.

One of the reasons the council gives for the delay is that it was “undertaking deep cleans of streets” hit by the flooding and it may still be some time before things return to the “norm”.

This was five months after the second set of floods and that timeframe seems, from the outside, a little on the long side.

Whilst the floods were severe, surely, given our recent history, they were not a huge surprise. Is it not now reasonable to expect our council to be more robust in its resources so it is able to handle the aftermath more dynamically?

After all, the people living in these ‘dirty streets’ should not be expected to have to pay the price many months down the line.

They pay their council tax for a variety of services and, in pure black and white terms, have not been getting what they pay for. And we haven’t heard the city council beating a path to their doors offering a refund.

Winter is on its way and the city council needs to clean up its act... quickly.

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