I have read that farmers are now supposed to dredge and maintain ditches around their farms, they are subsidised for this. A farmer locally has indeed done this and it has stopped a neighbouring field to us from flooding. My point is should that shouldnt all farms now have maintained ditches to help stop flooding?

At last someone has seen through the causes of the the recent floods,i dont know how old you are Andy but back in the 60s the roads were looked after by 'lengthsmen',these guys looked after the drainage ditches along their length of road,and took great pride in their job,compare with today,you never see a well maintaned road side ditch or drainage gulley,While on the subject i feel we should start planting red beds by rivers and generaly greening up our urban areas with more 'planting pockets' in those vast areas of tarmac we see today at supermarkets etc.,the run off from these must be held back from the drains,i'm no expert on these matters but its just a question of going back to nature and creating more soakaways.

As I understand it, the amount of rainfall that has fallen has been exceptional for such a short period. Since the movement of depressions eastwards is blocked by warm air over central Europe, they've just been sitting on top of Britain and emptying the Atlantic all over us. That's not really anyone's fault, apart from possibly Allah.

On a more local scale, clearing ditches will help to reduce overflowing onto adjacent roads, but it's not going to have much effect on stopping the rapid rise in river levels in Ludlow and Tenbury. Overgrazing by sheep and cattle and over-efficient land drainage in the upper catchments of the Teme, Corve and Clun are more likely to be to blame.

Soakaways are an excellent concept though, and the vast areas of tarmac are making everything worse. Despite this, Gay Meadow is still going to have houses built on it...

i actually think the main cause of excess flooding is a) the amount of rainfall in such a short space of time, obviously and B) the amount of building and tarmaced roads around now as instead of having open fields we have more and more buildings which obviously means the water has nowhere to soak into as it would if there were fields.
however i do also agree that draining the ditches will hopefully help.
there was something about this on countryfile yesterday-but didnt see it all