PICKERING'S only hope of getting flood defences lies in local and regional agencies coming together to help fund a scheme.

That was the conclusion of Ryedale MP John Greenway after a meeting with the Environment Agency's regional director, Craig McGarvey.

Pickering was devastated by flooding last month when the town's beck burst its banks, inundating more than 70 businesses and homes. The floods sparked fresh calls for the town to be protected against future disasters.

But Mr Greenway warned that unless the Government pumped hundred of millions of pounds into the national flood budget, defences would not be funded through the Agency's own budget alone.

He said Ryedale District Council had already pledged £1 million toward flood defences, and similar support was now needed from North Yorkshire County Council and the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee, which provides funding from a levy imposed on local authorities across the region.

He said Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, should also be approached for funding.

"I believe that if through local partnership, we could raise between £5 million and £6 million of the projected £6.7 million cost, there is a good prospect that the Environment Agency would then fund the balance."

He said that under the agency's point scoring system, Pickering would score more points if a substantial part of the cost of the scheme was being met from resources other than the agency.

He said he had written to all the agencies concerned urging them to back the proposal.

He revealed that Floods Minister Phil Woolas MP had agreed to meet a delegation from Pickering in the autumn.

North Yorkshire County Council leader John Weighell said the authority's chief executive John Marsden and finance director John Moore had been asked to investigate the possibility of NYCC taking a proactive lead on the issue.

Pickering county councillor Greg White told the council's quarterly meeting at Northallerton: "Time and again we see the plight of rural communities such as Pickering being ignored and money channelled into metropolitan areas like Hull. It is clear that the Government will never fully fund the defences needed to keep the people of North Yorkshire safe, so the county council urgently needs to look at alternative ways of protecting lives and property."

Coun White said he was confident that NYCC, working with partners, could find a way of jointly designing, funding and delivering a sustainable flood defence scheme for Pickering.

"The existing scheme for Pickering, which involves building up the banks of the beck, is very expensive and intrusive. We need to ensure that flood alleviation measures are appropriate to the needs of our towns and in Pickering's case it has been suggested that this might involve some sort of water storage area further upstream which could be used to moderate the beck's flow at peak times.

"Of course we also need to be sure that by protecting our towns we do not simply move the problem to other communities elsewhere."

The council agreed a motion which urged Defra and the Environment Agency to take "immediate action" to reinstate any flood defence project that has been postponed, due to lack of funding, in North Yorkshire.

  • Residents of Pickering, hit by the horrendous floods last month are being invited to a meeting called by the Environment Agency to discuss the crisis.

The York-based agency team is holding a meeting at Pickering Memorial Hall from 2pm-8pm next Tuesday with the aim, said area flood risk manager Thomasin Turner, to learn more about the flooding disaster and how it affected specific areas of the market town.

Ms Turner said: "We are urging people to come along with photographs and any other documentation which we can use to plot the path and the times of the flooding more specifically.

"We will add the data to our own records and return to Pickering later in the year to update residents on the results of our review."

Four more drop-in sessions are to be held across North Yorkshire in the next few weeks.

Ms Turner said that on June 25/26 more than 40mm of rain fell in 12 hours and 48mm over 24 hours.

The agency is responsible for flood protection from main rivers and designated small water courses.