Video: Inside the bunker that could prevent Yorkshire flooding again

It might not be much to look at, but a large brick building, tucked away on a Hull industrial estate, is a vital cog in a plan, which if it works, could prevent the scenes of devastation witnessed in 2007 ever happening again.

Its location is not widely advertised – the directions end with the advice, “if you can smell fish, you’re in the right area” – largely because Yorkshire Water, which owns and runs it doesn’t want to compromise the security of the giant pumps inside. The company has had a presence here for some decades, but recently the site has become a central part of its efforts to keep Hull and surrounding villages dry.

Today all is quiet. While it has been drizzling for much of the morning and torrential downpours are forecast later in the afternoon, these pumps will only come into play if faced with the kind of freak conditions which four years ago turned much of East Yorkshire into one giant river.

The summer of 2007 was the wettest on record and, on June 24, as the rain continued to pour, large parts of Yorkshire were unable to cope. That evening there was footage of office workers being airlifted from buildings in Sheffield, canoes being steered down a street in Beverley and large parts of Hull were rendered completely inaccessible.

In the days and weeks that followed, the inquest into the disaster began and as the victims whose homes had been overrun with contaminated water began to rebuild their lives, a Government report concluded that the events of that summer was not a one-off, but “an ever increasing threat”.

Sir Michael Pitt’s report contained 92 recommendations, ranging from the setting up of a Cabinet committee to deal with flood planning to the phasing out of sandbags in favour of more reliable flood prevention methods. Widely praised as a comprehensive blue-print for action it also called for more investment from utility companies.

Which brings us back to Hull, where Yorkshire Water has since spent more than £30m on flood prevention schemes. Most, like the anonymous pumping station, which in times of heavy rainfall can now shift 70 tonnes of water a second, are hidden from public view, which is why the company is on the offensive to show that Hull isn’t the forgotten city it was branded in the immediate aftermath of the floods.

“We also now have an early warning system in place which monitors the flow levels in the sewers so we are not taken by surprise,” says Yorkshire Water’s Flood Strategy Manager Wendy Kimpton, who was working in Doncaster at the time of the 2007 floods. “These have been big engineering projects, but the other key thing which has happened in the last four years is that we work much more closely with other organisations.

“One of the Pitt report’s recommendations was that information should be shared much better between various organisations like us, the Environment Agency and local councils. Historically we didn’t tend to be very good at letting people know what information we had and what work we were undertaking. That not only meant that there was potential duplication, but also that no-one was making the best use of the knowledge which was out there about flooding.”

As Wendy looks out over the giant pumps there is much talk about partnership working. It can sound like an exercise in box ticking, but teaming up with the local councils of Hull and East Riding has allowed funding and expertise to pooled.

The real test will of course only come when the rain comes again. So far the pumps have been triggered on the odd occasion, but nothing on the scale of the 2007 deluge.

However, with extreme weather patterns becoming more common, it’s probably only a matter of time and when it does, a underground tank, a 20-minute drive from the Hull pumping station, will come into its own.

The roof to what looks like a giant swimming pool is currently under construction in North Ferriby and when completed this autumn it will act as a holding pen for three million litres of water.

A new sewer has also been laid and while the project will cost £2.2m for those who saw the homes flooded with sewage, it will be money well spent.

Around 150 villages in East Yorkshire were affected by the floods four years ago and while Yorkshire Water has now assessed around half of them, getting to the bottom of what happened has not always been easy.

“We have struggled in some areas because a lot of people don’t want to admit they were flooded,” says Wendy. “They fear it will cause their house price to fall and their insurance premiums to rocket. We also quickly realised that people didn’t want to advertise the fact their property might flood by installing the standard floodgates. However, we’ve now come up with a more discreet design, which has been much more popular.

“Something like that doesn’t cost huge amounts of money, but it can make a huge amount of difference, not least because it gives people a little more peace of mind. There are still some people, particularly the elderly, who four years on become incredibly unsettled when it rains. It’s understandable, in 2007 they saw how quickly they could lose everything.”

Elsewhere, Yorkshire Water is looking at the creation of ponds and lagoons which come under the banner of sustainable urban drainage and the total cost of the flooding programme will come in at £120m.

“It’s our customers’ money were are spending and there are inevitably some difficult calls,” adds Wendy.

“We don’t want any home to flood, but there are cases where it could potentially cost millions to protect just two or three homes from freak weather which may not happen for another 20 or 50 years. We have to make sure we are delivering value for money .

“I know that some people probably think our flood work has gone quiet, but it really hasn’t. Across the region we are working harder than ever to ensure we have the very best system in place to control surface water and minimise the chance of severe disruption.”

Over in Beverley, one of the worst-affected towns in the east of the county, funding has recently been secured for a large-scale flood prevention scheme, which includes improvement to drainage, sewers and storage tanks. “We were one of the lucky ones,” says Denise Sowden of the Westwood Flood Group in Beverley, who successfully campaigned for the improvements for four years. “Our home has an annex flat attached to it, so we were able to stay there while the main house dried out.

“You have to move on, but in the early days when no one seemed quite sure what had caused the flooding it was difficult. However, we are four years on now and while there are probably still some hoops to jump through, it does feel like we are getting there.

The construction company is now on site and the work should be completed by next spring.

“I think any one who has been flooded would rather people take their time to decide on the best precautions rather than a knee-jerk reaction which doesn’t actually work,” says Denise. “However, when nothing is happening people do wonder whether they have been forgotten, now they can see that they haven’t.”

A summer of devastation

During the summer of 2007, Met Office records showed that 414mm of rain fell across England and Wales in May, June and July – more than at any time since records began in 1766.

While Hull and Sheffield bore the brunt of the flooding in the June, Emley Moor in West Yorkshire was the wettest place in the country that month, recording 294mm rainfall, more than four times the seasonal average.

As flooding swept south, more than 48,000 homes and almost 7,000 businesses were affected.

A report by the Environment Agency, published last year, estimated the floods had cost the country £3.2bn, with the average cost per home around £26,000.