WORK is continuing to protect residents in Witney and Abingdon five years after devastating floods hit the county.

About £1m has been spent in West Oxfordshire since the county was hit in July 2007.

More than 1,600 West Oxfordshire residents and about 70 businesses were affected.

Since then, West Oxfordshire District Council has secured £1m for flood protection work and 19 schemes have been completed.

They have gone at locations including Witney, Bampton, Brize Norton, Leafield, Kingham, Cassington, Clanfield and Shipton-under-Wychwood.

In Witney, where 230 homes were flooded, defences are at Madley Brook, Queen Emma’s Dyke, Eastfield Road and Burwell Meadow.

The measures range from installing new drainage to building flood defence barriers.

Further flood protection work costing £200,000 is planned for Alvescot, Curbridge, Colwell Brook, Shilton and Brize Norton.

There is also a £130,000 scheme planned to protect homes in Kelmscott, where defences will be fitted to each property.

Cabinet member for the environment David Harvey was among those who delivered hundreds of sandbags to residents.

He said whole villages had been cut off completely.

Mr Harvey added: “Recent flooding in other parts of the country have been a stark reminder of what West Oxfordshire went through five years ago.

“It is not an event we want to go through again, which is why we have worked tirelessly to bring about improvements.

“I am proud of our engineering team and what has been achieved in our district, and we will continue to do whatever we can to further support communities.”

In Abingdon, where 661 homes were hit by flooding, £50,000 was spent moving the Mill Bridge over the River Ock to help water flow.

The Environment Agency spent £110,000 on a feasibility study but decided against a £3.5m programme of flood alleviation measures. It said the risk of flooding on the scale of 2007 was not great enough. The town was hit by severe flooding in 1947, 1998, 2000, 2003, and 2007.

The Turberville Close home of mum-of-three Samantha Bowring, 42, was one of the houses that flooded.

She said: “Abingdon missed out after 2007 because the flooding didn’t affect schools and hospitals, and there weren’t lots of road closures.

“Residents in the town are very concerned and we will continue to lobby for improved flood defences.”