A FRUSTRATED homeowner is calling on highways bosses to act after months of flooding has seen his historic 180-year-old wall crumble.

Steve Knight, 61, lives at the junction of Head Street and Colne Road in Halstead and says the area is regularly plagued by flood water.

Having reported the flooding for a nearby drain in the summer, Mr Knight says the issue has got so bad it has led to the collapse of his historic garden wall.

The wall at Mr Knight’s front garden is jointly owned with his neighbour and dates back more than 180 years to 1840 when the house was first built.

In the Halstead conservation area, the wall is made of a special Suffolk red brick, but Mr Knight says the flood water is washing away the mortar, leading the wall the crumble in areas.

Now Mr Knight says it will cost thousands to fix but can’t start the rebuild until the flooding is cleared up.

Mr Knight said: “I first reported the drain in the summer and then again on October 1 when we really started to get some wet weather.

“When it is raining it starts forming a puddle about five to six meters across and 10cm deep.

“It comes up onto the footway and it's worse when vehicles throw up water.

“There is no point repairing it at the moment as the water would just wash out the fresh mortar again before it could even dry.

“This could be a public safety risk, but we are at an impasse until highways does something about the drain.

“The main support in the corner is now starting to crack and the wall will collapse.

“The path is the main walking route for the school and is at a dangerous point, a junction.

“There are numerous reasons why they should deal with it, not just my selfish need to fix my wall.

“Yes, the water does eventually drain away, but clearly it cannot handle the volume of water.”

In response an Essex Highways spokesman said: “Across Essex we have over 320,000 drainage assets to maintain on a wide variety of road networks.

"Our routine maintenance cycle of gully cleansing prioritises our County Routes, which is mostly made up of A and B roads'.

"These priorities are set using the average silt levels recorded from our cleansing over a number of years together with flood risk and road speed data.

“During periods of extreme rainfall flash flooding can occur. 

"This happens when the volume of water overwhelms drainage systems and is temporarily 'trapped' on the road surface until systems begin to clear.”

“The highway drainage at this location was previously cleansed at the end of last calendar year.

"We will arrange an inspection and any subsequent works to be undertaken in this area.”