Torrential downpours during the night and early morning yesterday saw the mini-roundabout in Loire Drive, Newtown, completely submerged.

When the flood was at its worst, the junction was impassable to cars trying to get into the Asda car park.

The backlog into Robin Park Road caused long, slow-moving and occasionally static queues snaking all the way back to Warrington Road at Worsley Mesnes.

Drain clearance engineers were eventually called in and the level subsided, but the delays left some drivers wondering why they were still having to put up with them.

And the long-term position was no clearer today as both landowner and council said the repeated flooding was each other's responsibility.
Robin Park sits in a flood plain and even before the Asda store expanded in the 1990s, water routinely used to form to considerable depths in the dip in what used to be Soho Street (now the two-storey car park). In redesigning and upgrading the site, Asda said it had tackled the issue once and for all.

But it soon became apparent that the flood had just decanted onto land nearer to the Robin Retail Park.

Motorist Derek Thomas from Ashton said: "The traffic hardly moved for half an hour and, when I finally found out that the cause of the jam was that blessed Asda flood again, I was even angrier.

"This flood problem has been going on for years. If you are going to build shops in a flood plain you had better have a very good drains network in place to stop it from being swamped every time you have heavy rain.

"But clearly someone isn't doing their job properly and, in this instance, a lot of drivers were stuck in an unnecessary traffic jam because of it."

The local said it believed that the owner of Robin Park Retail Park, Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society, was responsible.

A spokesman for the society said: "We are aware of ponding at this roundabout but have never received any complaints from either the council or residents.

"As this is a roundabout on a highway we believe that it is the council's responsibility. But if someone cares to contact us, perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement."