£50m needed to ease North Yorkshire flood risk

The North Yorkshire County Council strategy also reveals that 6,500 non-residential properties such as business premises, could also be at risk along with many parts of the county’s road and rail network, as well as 50 key buildings such as hospitals, schools, emergency service facilities, national power, energy, water and sewerage infrastructure and government offices.

The strategy covers a review of flooding incidents, highlighting which organisations are responsible for dealing with floods, land drainage, funding the planned strategy, and focusing on the sources and causes of flooding in the vast rural area.

The report says an estimated £50m of Government cash is needed over 10 years to develop flood risk projects. The money has yet to be found.

Mark Young, the council’s flood risk manager, says: “As the largest council area in England, North Yorkshire also has one of the most extensive networks of watercourses and drainage systems. Mapping of the critical features on watercourses and of virtually the entire underground drainage network has never been tackled before and so much of the things that contribute to, or protect communities from flooding, are not recorded.

“It would be a huge and unrealistic goal to try to map and record all these features and networks, but we are committed to capturing as much data and information as we can, particularly for locations where the risk of flooding is known to be the greatest.”

Mr Young said the new strategy has six priorities including a greater role for communities in managing flood risk, improving knowledge of flood risk, utilising sustainable drainage, improving knowledge of the watercourse and drainage network and better use of potential funding opportunities. An action plan has now been drawn up which would be regularly updated to reflect changes in flood risk priorities.

“A key challenge in our flood protection vision for North Yorkshire is for the council to play our part in helping develop the ability of communities to look after themselves to a greater degree that they already do. The development of community plans for managing and monitoring local flood risks is a key part of that vision.”

He added: “Flood risk management is most effective and successful when it is integrated with the social, economic and environmental needs of the communities they sit within and serve.”

Mr Young warns it is essential that new developments do not increase flood risk to existing communities.

He said requests for Government funding had been made for flood alleviation schemes for the Foss in York and the Rye catchment, Malton.