Emily Mellalieu, Development Manager Team Leader, will talk about Natural Flood Management within North Yorkshire
Minutes:
The Members were given an explanation on the role that Natural Flood Management [NFM] has played in North Yorkshire and the ongoing maintenance and liability that is involved within that. NFM projects have been developed in North Yorkshire for several years now as a form of flood mitigation. This is being done both as a singular authority and in partnership with others. Authorities started to use the measure because the initial costs were cheaper, and it provided a dual purpose with helping to support the work needed for the biodiversity crisis. It was acknowledged that there were drawbacks to the scheme. The long-term costs could prove high due to the smaller replacement cycle, its benefits are often hard to quantitatively prove, and there are certain areas where physical approaches were still needed. It is now accepted that NFM is a regular part of the preventative “toolkit”, but members were informed that it needed to meet with other measures to ensure that North Yorkshire was mitigated in the most efficient way.
An update was provided on one NFM project that was developed, in partnership with City of York Council, in early 2022. The project was able to be developed due to a strong funding bid which could demonstrate that it would benefit multiple authorities. Alongside that, much of the baseline work was previously developed by LEP in their work with the Dales flood funding. It was shown to Members that this multi-authority approach would be instrumental in the future and would allow for the new North Yorkshire Council [NYC] to be competitive in attracting funding for future flooding projects. It was revealed that the project was initially being developed in York and the models used, and the delivery for that, would then be extended to a greater area, allowing for the lessons learnt and the innovations made to be carried out. In order for the scheme to succeed, it was said that the following questions would need to be answered:
· How could further funding be accessed?
· Could the scheme viability be proven across the wider area?
· How can it be ensured that the benefit asymmetries are not too large, particularly at different points in the rivers? An example of this was given as whether the downstream communities would receive more treatment than the upstream communities.
Following the update, one Member shared their experiences of working with the flood defence systems being put in place by East Riding of Yorkshire Council, near Hull, and the funding models they put in place to support the NFM there. The Member asked if such a model could be replicated in North Yorkshire?
The response given that the progress made will be monitored but it would be difficult to reproduce in North Yorkshire due to the costs associated with the project in the long-term, accentuated by the size of the county. North Yorkshire Council will seek to encourage NFM projects but it would not be viable across the whole area as the shorter replacement cycle would make flood defences too expensive to run.
A question was asked by a Member as to the funding models that would be available?
There are revenue pots that are available to access, alongside seeking to draw upon future section 106 agreements, among others. It would also be important to show the benefits of the investments to certain parts of the private sectors to try to draw upon capital revenue streams there too.