York council meeting: Flood inquiry 'robust but fair' - backing for campaign to save barracks

The city’s independent flood inquiry was presented to councillors on Thursday evening.

Lawyer Angharad Davies, who led the panel which looked into the devastating floods and their aftermath in York, told councillors the recommendations might be challenging but they were achievable.
She also said the panel had aimed to make its report “robust but fair”, spoke of the difficulties caused by flood planning being split between local and national bodies, and repeated warnings about flooding in the future.

“We cannot be sure whether the Boxing Day flood was a direct result of climate change, but we do know events are likely to become more frequent,” Ms Davies said.

She faced questions from councillors with several raising concerns about undefended city centre streets, in areas like Queen’s Staith, Micklegate and Clementhorpe.

The inquiry panel had spoken to the Environment Agency about those fears, she said, and asked new demountable or permanent barriers for those streets are sped up so residents do not face another flood before any defences arrive.

Ms Davies also told councillors although the panel had looked into catchment management and ways of holding water back upstream, it would take an enormous collaboration across different authorities, landowners and drainage boards to get anything significant in place for the Foss.

At the same meeting the whole council backed a call to oppose barracks closures in York.

Labour’s Cllr James Flinders put forward a motion calling for council bosses to write to the Ministry of Defence opposing the plan, and to lobby the York MPs to help.

Earlier York TUC’s Ian Craven had urged councillors to back the motion, saying they had fought and won campaigns for the bases in 1984 and again in 1999, but the support of both the council and the MPs had been key both times.

Losing more than 1000 skilled and well paid jobs would hit the city’s economy hard, Cllr Flinders said.

A Conservative amendment proposed by council leader Cllr David Carr tried to change the “opposition” to “extreme concern”, attracting accusations he was not standing up for York.

Labour Cllr David Levene said: “You cannot even use the work ‘oppose’, and that’s pathetic.”

His colleague Cllr Dafydd Williams said: “There are great honourable examples of Tory led councils around the country when a proposal directly adversely affects the area they serve standing up and saying ‘no not in our area, we do not accept this’. Yet time and again the Tories in this city are quite happy to turn  over and accept.”

Cllr Carr said he had heard of the Army’s  plans to leave York “with a heavy heart” but said the council should not try to keep the military in York “as a museum piece” to benefit the city and not the Army. 

He and other council leaders were already engaging with the MoD and pushing for answers on jobs, redeployment and retraining, he added.
However, his amendment  was voted down by other parties – including the Lib Dems who share power on the council with the Conservatives.

Lib Dem Cllr Ann Reid explained her group would not be backing the Conservative amendment, saying although council leaders had already spoken to the Defence Secretary, with many questions unanswered it was councillors’ responsibility to state their opposition to the closures.
Once that amendment had failed the motion was carried unanimously.