Another anti-flood scheme weakened by cuts

The Environment Agency announced yesterday that despite pushing ahead with plans to reduce the risk of flooding to 212 homes and businesses in Northallerton as well as the Friarage Hospital, a further proposal to build a £2.1m storage reservoir to reduce flood risk at Brompton, east of the town centre, has now been put on hold due to a lack of funding.

The announcement means the cost of the long-awaited scheme will now be almost halved from around £6m to £3.4m.

It follows the shelving of plans to bolster defences in Pickering in the summer, after costs soared from £1.3m to £3.2m owing to strict regulations under the Reservoirs Act 1975 and the complex nature of the site.

As revealed in the Yorkshire Post yesterday, the Slowing the Flow Partnership Project Board, a coalition of local and national authorities, has now put forward three suggestions to take the Pickering scheme forward.

Anne McIntosh, the Conservative MP for Thirsk, Malton and Filey, chair of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, said: “This will be disappointing for the district. This seems to reflect the over ambition of the Environment Agency in agreeing to these expensive fancy projects then finding out they don’t have the budget to build them.”

An Environment Agency spokeswoman stressed that the £2.1m storage reservoir had not been abandoned and would be revived if the money could be found from other sources.

Critics feel this is very unlikely in the current economic situation.

Miss McIntosh added: “In the present climate they have not managed to bring the extra money for Thirsk or Pickering and I would think it is a very tall order to do that in Northallerton.

“I had the opportunity to question the Prime Minister this week on partnership funding and the problem with it is at the moment is everybody is facing an economic crisis.

“There may be less lucrative ways of doing this work well which will cost less.”

The work will include channel improvements in both the Sun and Turker becks to increase water flow capacity and the installation of hydraulic control measures to reduce the risk of flooding further downstream.

Properties at risk of flooding in Romanby will also be better protected by construction of new defences costing £50,000

Meanwhile, engineers are in talks to repair the town centre culverts which are in urgent need of repair but are not the responsibility of the Environment Agency, to ensure they can be completed.

Project manager Charles Forman said: “The Northallerton area has a history of localised flooding which has caused disruption to residents and businesses. Severe flooding occurred in 2000 and 2002 and many properties were damaged.

“A flood defence scheme was originally progressed by North Yorkshire County Council, which included some work in Brompton, but the main part of the scheme could not be completed because of national funding constraints on flood defence work.

“Since then, the watercourses running through Northallerton have been re-classified as main rivers and the Environment Agency now has the power to implement flood defence work along them. While we can never guarantee that Northallerton will not flood again in extreme circumstances, the work we are proposing will significantly reduce the risk for a large number of homes and businesses.”

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