The nine-year-old boy, who has not been named, was playing around a stream in Dingle Walk, Standish Lower Ground, when he tried to retrieve a tennis ball and fell in the water.

Two of his friends ran to a nearby house, and occupier Della Heaton, ran to help and rescued the boy.
The 36-year-old said: "I didn't feel it was heroic. If it was my children I would expect someone to do it.

"I had just come home from work, I had a shower and put my pyjamas on and I was just chilled out and the next minute I heard 'bang bang'.
"I went to the door and two young teenagers were saying, 'missus, missus you've got to help us. There's a lad drowning.'

"I went across the street and there he was head up in the water, trying to say he was okay but going under at the same time.
"I went on the footpath and shimmied on my backside. I offered the branch to him but it was not quite long enough. I had to shimmy down and I lost my footing and I managed to get the branch to him.

"I offered it to the lads to pull him up. It wasn't easy but we got him out.
"I was a bit bedraggled and dirty in my pyjamas."
The lads then took him back home to his parents.

Della, a mother of two 11-year-old twin girls, said: "He turned up on my doorstep the night after saying 'thank you missus for helping me.' He's only little."

Residents in Dingle Walk say flooding there has been an annual problem for at least the last 15 years, since the waterway was "funnelled" under the footpath as part of the Morris Homes Evans House Farm estate development.

Heavy rain and blocked culverts has caused the steam to flood more and reach depths of 20 feet in the middle.
A spokesman for Morris Homes said: "Recent heavy rainfall has caused abnormally high water levels in the brook by Dingle Walk.

"We are aware of local concerns and are undertaking an investigation to see what measures could be taken to help improve drainage so that the current system can better cope with exceptional rainfall."