In a day of action at Syston Brook, volunteers mucked in to shovel “absolutely solid” silt out of the concrete-bottomed channel, which was then removed by the Environment Agency.

Hick said: “It was a lot of hard work but we had fun, it was great.

“It’s been quite fortunate this year because we didn’t have any floods in January, thank goodness, for the first time in a couple of years.

“It was one of those jobs we’d have liked to have got done last year, but there was more water and a lot more stuff upstream that needed to be shifted first.

“It’s trying to get to the bottom of it so that next year, crossed fingers, it won’t be so bad.”