PLACARD-WAVING protesters staged a demonstration in Pickering yesterday to demand the community gets its badly-needed flood defences.
They gathered outside the town’s memorial hall where the Environment Agency was holding a public drop-in session to talk about the flooding and learn how it affected specific parts of the town.
Campaigners placed sandbags outside the hall – which
suffered thousands of pounds worth of damage to its flooring and lift in the latest deluge – and chanted slogans calling on the agency to honour its promise to protect the town.
Flood defence group spokesman Howard Keal, said: “We’ve told the agency we want it to stop sitting on its hands and to put pressure on the Government to provide the money for the scheme to go ahead without delay.
“It is scandalous that a massive £750,000 of public money has been invested in drawing up a viable defence scheme that has been gathering dust for the last five years.”
Mr Keal said the plug was pulled on funding for the £6.5million scheme despite the fact the town has flooded six times in eight years.
He said: “Had it gone ahead it would have prevented people from going through the misery of flooding yet again.
“It has to be rammed home that the latest flooding – the worst in living memory – was predicted and preventable. There are no excuses. Sirens and buddy schemes to help raise the alarm are all good suggestions but what really matters is preventing flooding happening in the first place.
“The Government has talked up the money it is putting into defences when it has actually imposed cuts.
“We need the Environment Agency to hammer on the Government’s door to provide the money to fund the defences.”
More than 60 homes and businesses were swamped in the deluge of June 25 – many for the first time. More than 40 millimetres of rain fell in a 12 hour period and 48 millimetres over 24 hours.
The agency’s area flood risk manager, Thomasina Turner, said: “The more that we know about how the flooding affected different homes and streets, then the more we can do to find ways of protecting people.
“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.”
Yesterday’s flood surgery was one of five being held across North Yorkshire in areas fit by recent flooding.
