ANOTHER stretch of the A22 Godstone Road should be reopened next week.
This week a short section of the road between Hayes Lane and St James Road was opened for local traffic.
Nathan Elvery, the council's interim chief executive said water levels in the Dale Road area had fallen considerably and the council was now in the process of taking over the remaining pumping operations from the fire brigade.
This, he said, would enable the removal of much of the fire brigade pipes from the road, allowing a complete stretch from Purley Cross, halfway up to the water treatment works to be hopefully opened next week.
At the same time the council is working with Transport for London (TfL), which is responsible for the road, to lay more permanent underground piping along a 100 metre length of the road from the water treatment works towards Purley.
Mr Elvery said this would free access to sideroads, enabling residents to get in and out.
More importantly it will mean that if flooding occurred again, it would be easy to connect the permanent pipes to temporary ones allowing the water to be taken away without having to close the road.
Mr Elvery said: "We are talking to TfL about how quickly we can bury the pipes we need to bury."
That, he said, would take longer than a week because the situation around the water treatment works remain difficult.
Mr Elvery said the council was working as quickly as it could to reopen the road in its entirety.
But it was important that permanent or semi-permanent works were in place to avoid another closure should the weather turn bad again.
