Workmen were this afternoon attempting to float a 90ft crane under Ouse Bridge in York after high tides halted building work on a new cinema complex in York for three days.

The construction platform which workmen were trying to float under a bridge in York this afternoon.

The work ground to a halt because the river's high level stopped the vital piece of machinery being moved.

Builders working on the three-screen cinema complex on the site of the old Yorkshire Evening Press building in Coney Street had planned to transport the crane along the river because there was no access through the city centre. However, the only point they could load the crane on to the barge was at Queen's Staith, and by the time bollards there could be cleared, the river had risen too high.

The crane was delayed from getting under Ouse Bridge, where it stood at a cost running into thousands of pounds a day. Foreman Carl Humphries, of Milton Keynes-based Volker Stevin Piling and Construction, said of the earlier delay: "We're losing vital time of our contracted period. All the time the river is high, my men are basically waiting around because they can't get on with the important jobs."

Meanwhile, heavy rain over the last couple of days is expected to die out in the early hours of tomorrow morning, but the temperature will drop to -4C and there will be snowfalls across the county, two inches on the North York Moors.

A spokesman for PA Weather said there would only be a slight snowfall, but on Sunday there would be freezing fog.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency announced today that local authorities in Yorkshire had agreed to increase the amount of funding available to improve flood defences and flood warnings.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.