YORKSHIRE Water has denied its pipes are the cause of landslips in North Yorkshire.

A recent report ordered by residents of Knipe Point in Scarborough, suggested the company’s pipes could be at fault, but Yorkshire Water has refuted this following a second report.

It said: “In an open report we received recently, a number of accusations were made about us, including that water appearing from the cliff at Knipe Point was coming from our pipe which serves the McCain’s factory. It was alleged that a leak from this pipe was the main cause of the cliff’s instability.

“We weren’t able to immediately respond to these allegations until we’d processed and reviewed all the relevant information and carried out our own investigation. Now this is done, we’d like to reassure everyone concerned that our investigations show that our pipe is not to blame in any way for the recent land slippage.

"Indeed, we and other experts found the report to contain a number of discrepancies, flaws and speculative claims and assumptions that simply don’t hold up under close scrutiny.”

The report also suggested that “available evidence would seem to suggest that the landslip was simply an act of nature”, and Yorkshire Water will meet with residents of Knipe Point in future to discuss their conclusions in more detail.