‘Give us same flooding aid as the south’

Dales demand for parity with Fishlake

THE “FORGOTTEN” flood victims of the Yorkshire Dales last night demanded to be put on an equal Government footing with communities in the south of the county.

Six months after a freak summer storm deluged homes and businesses and turned roads into rivers in one of the most remote parts of the National Park, council officials and a charity have called for parity with other victims.

They want Whitehall to guarantee to match-fund money raised locally to help victims – a move they say would bring in at least an extra £250,000 for relief work.

The move comes three weeks after the Government agreed to a similar match-funding scheme in South Yorkshire, parts of which were devastated by further floods last year.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick promised to match donations up to the value of £1m which had been raised to help people whose homes and businesses were affected when a month’s rain fell in 24 hours in

November and the River Don burst its banks.

Mr Jenrick’s action came after pre-election scenes in the village of Fishlake, near Doncaster, where Boris Johnson was confronted by residents angry at what they saw as a lack of support.

In the Upper Dales, where flash flooding caused extensive damage at the end of July, residents have now asked for a similar funding guarantee.

A letter to ministers from the Two Ridings Community Foundation, co-signed by Richmondshire

District Council and seen by

asks for match funding to “also be available to the people and communities of Swaledale, Wensleydale and Arkengarthdale who experienced equally devastating flooding”.

The request is endorsed by North Yorkshire County Council, the National Farmers’ Union and the area’s Local Enterprise Partnership.

Richmondshire District Council leader Angie Dale said: “If they can do it for one area they should do it for all areas. We need equality throughout.”

She said that while no-one in North Yorkshire begrudged the extra aid to communities further south, “what works in one area should work in another”.

More than £250,000 has so far been raised in donations for the rural communities.

Mark Jones, a parish councillor whose driveway was washed away by the floods and who remains without vehicular access to his home, said many people in the Dales felt “forgotten and left out”.

The Government’s Housing, Communities and Local Government department said it would respond to the request “in due course”.