£45m Plan To Improve Humber Flood Defences

It's being recommended £45m pounds needs to be invested to help protect the Humber region from any future floods.

For the first time, the River Hull Advisory Board which consists of local MPs, councillors and a range of environmental agencies, have agreed on what work needs to be done to improve the Humber's flood defences.

They've drawn up plans which include dredging the River Hull and removing sunken vessels.

Andy Mclachlan is Flood Risk Manager at East Riding of Yorkshire Council and on the River Hull Advisory Board. He told Viking FM:

"The Humber region is the second most flood risk region in the UK outside the Thames Valley. The December 2013 event could have been a lot, lot worse and if we don't invest in Humber tidal defences over the next 50 years we are probably looking at an event that is going to cause £30bn worth of damage to the local economy.

"As part of the work we feel needs to be carried out, we hope to dredge the river nback to its profile that we saw in the 1950s when it was used by commercial traffic. The amount of material and vessels in the river are causing a major restriction and we are also looking at operating the tidal barrier differently or putting a different structure in and that's about keeping water out of the river when it's raining and it'll prevent about 2 million tonnes of water."

Andy says it puts our region in a better position for securing future flood funding:

"Think of securing the money as going through a number of gateways and this is one of the major hurdles that we've crossed, having a strategy that's agreed by all the local flood risk management authorities and others gives us the framework to go and talk to the funders and give them a great deal of very good evidence that we should be spending money in this area.

"We have the money what we call indicatively allocated so the next stage once the strategy is adopted is to give individual pieces of work to different project teams who will then go and do a bit more detailed engineering surveys and that detailed business case is what we need to finally secure the money and get it in the bank as it were to secure the scheme."

Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness and chair of the River Hull Advisory Board, said:

“This strategy is the result of over two years’ hard work by everyone involved. Maintaining the existing river defence systems is critical for Hull and the East Riding as failing to make this continued investment may result in flood damages estimated at £3.4billion.

“I am tremendously proud of how everyone has pulled together with a real determination to take this opportunity to produce a robust strategy that will help reduce significantly the risk of flooding.

“There will be challenges ahead as we work towards delivering the recommendations in the strategy but with the same dedication, goodwill and co-operation shown so far, I am confident we will get there.”

Councillor Alan Clark, portfolio holder for emergency planning at Hull City Council, said:

“We are pleased to be working in partnership to implement a strategy for local flood risk management that will not only reduce flood risk in the area, but will also pave the way to explore the opportunities of connecting our waterfronts in Hull, Beverley and Driffield in order to utilise one of our best natural assets.”