Flood-hit residents will not get grants to protect homes
DOZENS OF people in Calderdale have been told they cannot claim a government grant to protect their homes from floods after last year’s devastating Storm Ciara because they used a similar scheme five years earlier.
Infrastructure in the Calder Valley is still being repaired a year on from Storm Ciara, which left 1,500 homes and businesses flooded in the district and caused severe disruption around the country.
The flooding was the second worst to hit the area in recent years after the Boxing Day floods of 2015, but since February 9 last year the area has faced
It’s a scandal and us as the local authority have to delver the bad news: Coun Scott Patient
16 flood alerts and warnings as well as a near miss in the form of last month’s Storm Christoph.
Scott Patient, Labour-run Calderdale Council’s Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Resilience, said the overall cost of flooding to the authority was in the millions of pounds but that central government support was only available in the worst cases.
He said: “It’s an incredible amount of money. We had Storm Ciara and Eva [Boxing Day 2015] and we were able to get some money off the back of [government emergency response committee] Cobra being called and emergency national money, but when it’s these nearmiss events we don’t necessarily get that compensation.
“The cost of flooding is millions and millions of pounds in terms of repaired assets. With landslides alone, the technical expertise comes to thousands and thousand of pounds.”
A £5,000 Property Flood Resilience (PFR) grant scheme is available to homes and businesses affected by flooding, paying to make a property more resilient to future flooding, such as putting in flood doors and raising electrics from ground level.
But Coun Patient said he believed more than 100 affected households in Calderdale would not be able to get the funds this time as they already claimed on the scheme after the 2015 Boxing Day floods.
He said the council had raised the issue with the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), as many of the affected householders may still need more protection if the original work wasn’t sufficient or if the house had seen modifications.
“Those people that haven’t had them before will get them or the majority have got them, but those in instances where that property has had it before sadly won’t.
It’s a scandal really and unfortunately us as the local authority have to deliver the bad news, he added. “I think it’s likely that there’s at least a number of people out there that don’t have the sort of protection that they should have. “
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