york floods 2015 case study

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York 2015: Anatomy of a Flood Disaster

York has known devastating flooding many times before and if ever there was a city used to its ravages, its residents have felt it. Time and again, the city’s defences have been improved and adjusted, as new lessons have been learned – but Christmas 2015 raised the bar once again. Over the course of a few days, York suffered its worst flooding in a generation.

Main Image:  The Ouse on December 29. Picture: Steve Carroll

Storm Eva unleashed a wave of unprecedented rainfall across the north. Coming just three weeks after  Storm Desmond , it exacerbated the ongoing situation , with saturated river catchments responding swiftly to the new deluge.

York Flood Group – made up of the City of York Council, the Environment Agency, North Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue and Yorkshire Water – met on December 27 to discuss the worsening situation. The group usually meets only when the River Ouse levels reach, or are expected to reach, 4.2 meters above normal summer level (asl).

On Monday 28 December, the Ouse peaked at 5.2 metres above its normal summer level, just short of the all-time high of 5.4 metres, recorded in autumn 2000. However, city-wide flooding occurred due to the devastating failure of the Foss Barrier.

It was opened on Saturday 26 December after the pumping station was flooded, leading to floodwaters from the Ouse flowing back into the Foss. The primary concern was the pumps failing due to water ingress to the electrical supply.

The Environment Agency said that if the Foss Barrier were not lifted, it could have jammed in the closed position, causing even worse flooding for 1,800 properties, as water would not have been able to discharge into the River Ouse.

A s a result of the decision, huge areas were flooded for the first time in many people’s lifetimes.   Foss Islands Road was closed, Foss Bank and the river were indistinguishable, and several cars parked off Layerthorpe were almost completely submerged.

About 500 homes alongside the Ouse, the Foss, Tang Hall Beck and Osbaldwick Beck were inundated. James Street travellers’ site was also severely hit, with many distraught residents saying they had lost everything.

In total in York, 250 people were evacuated from their homes. Around 10,000 sandbags were used, with 600 military personnel, 125 mountain rescue members, York Rescue Boat teams and countless volunteers helping to rescue flood victims or to fill and distribute sandbags around the flooded areas.

By December 29, the Foss barrier was operational again. The army flew in emergency equipment the day before and repairs were carried out overnight, but by then it was too late for many.

Householders were left counting the cost and  many business owners in the city-centre said they were given no warning the barrier was being lifted.

At its height, the flooding caused major knock-on problems. 

Floodwaters swamped the basement of the BT telephone exchange, damaging electrical equipment and cutting landline and wi-fi broadband services for thousands of York customers.

People across the city lost phone and internet connections, and many mobile networks failed or struggled, with some people unable to make or receive calls. 

Many buildings in the city-centre had no internet or phone connections and most shops, pubs and cafes were able to take cash payments only, as card machines were down.

Picture courtesy of Alfio Fresta

The Jorvik Viking Centre flooded for the first time in its 31-year history, and faced a closure of up to a year .   The cells at York Magistrates Court also flooded, meaning many cases had to be moved to other courts.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’s High Volume Pump from Harrogate was used at the Melrosegate Electrical Sub Station to keep it going, preventing 55,000 customers from losing power.

In the end, around 650 homes and businesses had been directly affected by flooding in the city centre. The cleanup cost the council half a million pounds, excluding damage to council assets including properties and infrastructure. It persuaded the government to pay £17m for Foss Barrier improvements and £45m for wider flood risk management improvement works across the city.

The original Foss pumping station was designed to pump about 30 tonnes of water per second from the Foss into the Ouse and was clearly unable to deal with the demand that Christmas.

The upgrade, which will include the installation of eight more powerful replacement pumps, is set to increase its capacity so it can handle at least 40 tonnes per second – securing its performance for the foreseeable future – or until climate change raises the bar again.

Future Climate Info provides a comprehensive flood risk assessment for residential properties through its suite of Environmental Risk Report s . These account for river, sea, coastal and surface water flood extents for a full, clear and effective view on any potential risks ahead of a property transaction.

Based on the assessment, Specialist flood risk services can look at flood resilience measures and a review of flood zoning with climate change allowances can give an accurate appraisal of the likelihood of flooding into the future.

For more information, contact us on 01732 755180 or email [email protected]

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R.Stead media

York st john university, 2015 york floods – one year on.

Christmas 2015 saw York’s river Ouse peaking at 5.2 metres high, flooding York and worst of all York City Centre. But was is life like now, one year on, for the residents and businesses who were affected by the gushing water?

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/198220102[/vimeo]

The floods of December 2015 came only 3 short years after a previous flood disaster in 2012, however these floods were the worst in a generation for York. With the height of the River Ouse’s water peaked around 5.2 metres, the damage was not confined to a small area around the river. About 500 homes alongisde the Ouse, the Foss, Osbaldwick Beck, Tang Hall Beck and Walmgate were just a few of the streets that were significantly damaged with over 250 people having to be evacuated from their homes.

Almost 1 year after the floods hit the city, may residents and businesses are still feeling the effects of the events that happened. For small businesses down Walmgate and Fossgate the floods will have damaged thousands of pounds worth of stock and the cost of replacing it all even greater.

The team at ‘Shhhh Hair & Beauty’ were affected massively by the floods with the salon being completely damaged with not much able to be saved. The owner and staff of the salon were happy to share their experience and sent me their story.

“It was one of the worst days of my life when I heard that the salon had been badly flooded. We managed to get into the salon the day after it happened to see the damage and it was just awful. There was just water everywhere and everything was drenched and filthy. There wasnt that much we could recover to be honest. With us being a beauty salon, most of the equipment we use is electrical based and all of it was just ruined from the water.”

” A few days in to January we had a sudden hit of realistion of how much damage there was. This business was my entire life and to see it back to bare with a mass amount of water damage was just heart. We had temporary wooden floors placed and any cheap seats we could find to place in front of the mirrors to try and keep the hair section of the business going.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhzMuER8vto[/youtube]

“Thankfully with all of the support we had we were able to keep going but at a much slower pace. We were struggling to purchase new equipment to get the salon back to normal. Customers became less frequent because we couldnt keep up with the latest standards and equipment as we just simply couldnt afford it. We did have threats of having to close the business at around February/ March time as more money was going out to coming in.”

“My business was my life and the thought of having to close it down was a thousand times worse than seeing the salon bare with damage. Another month passed by and it became clear that it would have to be by some miracle for us to get just one part of the salon back to the standards it was before. But slowly things started to pick up again and we could see a small improvement starting. I was finally able to order some new salon chairs and styling equipment and start to think about possibly re-decorating the floors and walls.”

“It had been a very stressful 6 months will so many ups and downs but I am so happy that we were able to celebrate the re-opening of ‘Shhhh Hair & Beauty’ in June of 2016 with a gorgeous new look and some of the best equipment you can buy.”

It had definitely been a very difficult time for the team and the salon since the floods till their new look emerged but I was interested to find out whether it is really all worth if considering there are possibilities that floods can easily hit again and what they have changed now from before.

“The issues with floods is that you can’t pin point of and when they are going to happen. We can’t just sit and wait for the next one as that would put everything on hold, instead you get on with life and just have to think a little more logically about you handle things. For us, we now pack away all electrical equipment at the end of the day and place it at a higher level so if anything does happen we can try and keep the damage to a minimum. We know that the river is there and that there is water flowing through the city, but you have to trust that everything is being done by your council to protect us as much as they can.”

Hannah Shaw, the manager of accommodation Student Castle, also shared her experience of what happened during that December month and the best way she thinks you can prepare for flooding.

“We were very lucky that we werent hit too bad here and it was just our front building that recieved a little bit of water damage. We knew floods had hit before but we thought defenses had improved from previous years. Im not sure there is much you can do in order to protect or prepare yourself and your homes/ buildings from floods but except know that they are a possible risk and try to rely on your comminuty to do all that they can to prevent deep floods.”

“I think the most difficult period of floods is definetely trying to keep positive with the devistation that can be left behind afterwards. For some people there can only be little damage and it is easy to get your life back together and on track, but for others almost everything can be flushed away and they are left having to find a way to rebuild their lives. At the other end of Walmgate the damage was much worse.”

It is clear that things are pretty much back to normal now for people in York but they also seem to rely on York’s flood defences, trusting they have been massively improved one year on.

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• Environment
• River maintenance, flooding and coastal erosion

Foss Barrier: investigation report

The Environment Agency commissioned an independent investigation by CH2M to look at how water entered the Foss Barrier building on Boxing Day 2015.

Foss Barrier and pumping station - factual report of flooding on 26 December 2015

Ref: LIT 10462

PDF , 1.81 MB , 26 pages

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

On 26 December 2015 over 600 properties along the River Foss in York flooded. The Environment Agency operates the Foss Barrier and pumping station which is designed to prevent flooding by stopping the River Ouse (when in flood) backing up the River Foss. When the barrier gate is closed the River Foss is pumped around the gate with 8 high capacity pumps. On 26 December 2015, the pumping station was unable to cope with the extremely high flows coming down the River Foss and Environment Agency staff turned off the 8 pumps and lifted the barrier between the Rivers Foss and Ouse. This was to prevent even more serious flooding as, had the gate remained in the lowered position, water would have built up behind the gate causing the water levels in the Foss to be higher, putting more properties at risk of flooding.

The extreme nature of the Boxing Day floods also led to water leaking into the Foss Barrier control room, putting the power supply to the building, and the ability to raise the barrier, at risk.

The report was commissioned in February 2016 to look at how water got into the pumping station building and to recommend remedial actions to minimise the risk of water entering the building in the future.

The exceptionally high water levels in the River Foss on 26 December 2015 exceeded the capacity of all eight pumps. The report states that had the barrier not been raised, then the levels in the River Foss would have continued to rise until it spilled over the top of the barrier gate. Without raising the barrier the peak water level on the River Foss would have occurred some 18 hours earlier.

In addition to exceeding the capacity of the pumps, the extreme nature of the flood caused water to enter the building’s service tunnel drainage system. The report found that leakage into the building through a construction joint and through an access cover, opened to install a mobile pump, were the 2 main routes of water entering the building.

The report recommends remedial actions to minimise the future risk of water entering the building all of which the Environment Agency is including as part of the upgrade work currently underway.

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An overflowing Foss, 2015 floods

This is something I’ve not seen before — though that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen before. It was probably a familiar sight every now and then before the Foss barrier was erected in the late 1980s. Flood water on Stonebow and in the Hungate area, on the afternoon of 27 December 2015.

Following on from the earlier walk by the Ouse and through the city centre , we’re now near the Foss, York’s second river. The failure of the Foss barrier is the main story in this particular flood of late December 2015, as it has caused the Foss to flood in a way it hasn’t done for a long time.

There’s also been flooding in the nearby Walmgate/Fossgate area, all very unexpected and sudden. There are many photos available online. I don’t have any, but thoughts are with the people of that area and others who have suffered in these floods and who will have the filthy mess to clear up from their houses and businesses when the water recedes.

Turning back away from town, along Peasholme Green. Where, again, the road was flooded near the Foss, on the approach to Layerthorpe Bridge.

To get out of the city on foot we had to backtrack up Aldwark onto Goodramgate, and leave through Monk Bar. Monkgate and St Maurice’s Road weren’t flooded, and neither was the Sainsbury’s store and its higher level car park. The flooding hasn’t submerged the entire city, though some media reports may have given that impression.

As in many other places in the city, I was one of many people standing taking photographs at the edges of the flooded areas. From this vantage point the picture became clearer on the extent of the flooding from the Foss in the Layerthorpe and Foss Islands area.

The Foss is normally in a narrow channel in the middle of this view below, looking across to the flooded car showroom on Layerthorpe (where the John Bull pub used to be).

The name ‘Foss Islands’ should give us a clue that this part of town has always been rather watery. Once the ‘King’s Fish-Pond’ or ‘King’s Fish Pool’. Its water has been controlled and channeled in recent centuries, but now spills out, reclaiming the space it once knew, creeping over the tarmac of the roads.

As depicted in this tweet from Chris Sharp on Twitter:

Map of Medieval #York alongside todays #flood map. pic.twitter.com/Bd84F3v0Js — Chris Sharp (@sharpsharp) December 27, 2015

Anyone walking on the walls and ending up at Layerthorpe Postern would have had to turn round and go back the same way, by the looks of things.

The lane at the back of the Sainsbury’s store takes us to Foss Bank. Here part of the road is also flooded, alongside the Foss. The river is normally to the left of those railings, and well below them, so you have to look over to see it. A different picture on Sunday 27 December. Though not unknown — it looked similar in the floods of 1982 (with a gasometer in the background, back then).

Turning back, heading home, there were crowds gathered on Monk Bridge, over the Foss at the end of Heworth Green, looking up Huntington Road where some of the worst local flooding had occurred in houses backing on to the Foss. The photo below shows the floodwater at the roundabout at the junctions of Monkgate, Huntington Road, Heworth Green and Foss Bank. We’re looking from Monkgate towards Huntington Road, with the roundabout on the right.

I’m assembling this page the day after these photos were taken. Early this morning we heard from the authorities that the river levels had stabilised.

The floodwaters will recede and the media — and we floodwatchers and amateur photographers — will disperse with them, leaving behind us, as always, many people having to clean up the mess the rivers left behind.

Related posts:

• On the Foss barrier, failure, and floods
• Not all underwater … York floods 2015
• Clifton’s Burdyke bubbling up: York floods, 2015
• York floods 2015: assistance required
• ‘How bad is it?’ Perspectives on the floods

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City of York Council: Towards long-term flood resilience

Storms Desmond and Eva in late December 2015 led to record river levels in many river catchments, 453 properties and 174 businesses flooded in York. The Environment Agency and City of York Council were successful in attracting funding to renew existing and provide new flood defences. The York Five Year Plan was developed and detailed business cases and designs for schemes in 19 flood cells across the city have been delivered. An adaptive approach to flood resilience has been developed, work programmes to develop increased flood storage and the incentivised delivery of natural flood risk management measures have commenced.

The challenge

The city of York is located in the Vale of York on the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss. Centred on this urban core, the administrative area extends to include villages of varying sizes and largely rural land with the River Derwent forming the eastern boundary. The Rivers Swale, Ure and Nidd combine upstream of York to form the River Ouse, a 3000km2 river catchment drains through the Ouse with almost 600 tonnes of water a second flowing through the city centre in significant flood events.

We have experienced a wide range of flood events from our rivers in York - major flooding in 1982, 2000 and 2015. The main river level gauge in the city has one of the longest continual records in the country and peak annual maximum levels show a steady rise in river levels in our city with the vast majority of major events occurring in the last 30 years.

Flood defences built in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s protect the vast majority of communities from flooding on the River Ouse and Foss and their tributaries, but their standard of protection has declined over this period and communities are facing a greater level of risk than before.

However, the walls and embankments in York cannot continue to be raised inconsequentially into the future, the impact on the way in which the city lives alongside its rivers would be irreparably damaged and would not be readily accepted.

The solution

City of York Council and the Environment Agency were aware of the need to improve the cities flood resilience following a number of significant flood events, notably two events in 2012, where our defences performed effectively but river levels were beginning to test the defence levels.

The Boxing Day floods of 2015 were the highest floods on record on the River Foss and the equal second highest on the River Ouse. The flooding followed an intense period of rainfall across November and December due to the impacts of Storms Desmond and Eva. More than 4,000 homes and 2,000 businesses flooded across Yorkshire with 453 properties and 174 businesses flooded in York.

Working in partnership the Environment Agency and City of York Council were successful in attracting funding, funding was allocated to the Environment Agency following the floods to renew existing and provide new flood defences across the city, £38m has been allocated to the Foss Barrier improvements and a total of £64m to the wider flood defences across the City of York.

The York Five Year Plan was developed and detailed business cases and designs for schemes in 19 flood cells across the city have been delivered, and works are complete in all but two locations.

Our city will always rely on some degree of direct and localised physical flood protection, our walls, embankments and pumping stations are essential to manage the scale of river flow during significant flood events. However, an adaptive approach to flood resilience has been developed to ensure these physical interventions still allow the city’s residents, businesses and visitors to safely enjoy our riverside areas. Defence hights have been capped and in some locations glass panels have been incorporated and locations and sizes of floodgates have been carefully considered to allow an unimpeded view of the cities key landmarks when defences are not in operation.

The current defence improvements incorporate levels that manage climate change impacts through to 2039. After this date the defences will continue to provide a level of protection, but this will degrade as future climate change scenarios lead to more rainfall and a resultant increase on river flows through the Rivers Swale, Ure and Nidd and ultimately into the River Ouse as it flows through city.

A programme of catchment scale interventions will be needed to provide this future adaptive climate change resilience.

Catchment scale modelling has commenced. It is envisioned that this will evidence a combination of flood storage and natural flood management measures such as afforestation, upland management, works to river margins and changes to farming practices which will provide a reduction in peak runoff downstream leading to reduced flood risk not just in York but in many other urban settlements in the catchment.

City of York Council have been successful in the award of £6m of Defra funding through the Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme to develop this work further.

The York Five Year Plan has developed, at significant pace, improvements to existing defences in the city giving an increased flood protection into the future. Appraisal, design and delivery has been developed in tandem across a number of projects by a multidisciplinary team allowing a range of efficiencies, savings and best practice to be developed.

How is the approach being sustained?

The final construction phases of the York Five Year Plan will complete over the next two years, the schemes assets will continue to be maintained and operated by the Environment Agency, City of York Council and Yorkshire Water. Extensive emergency planning and response plans ensure smooth operation of the defences. Regular review, exercising and investigations ensure the defence measures continue to be fit for purpose for the city.

The need for continued catchment scale interventions is recognised by all key partners, the existing innovation funding will be used to develop the approaches through to 2027, where possible the project will also inform catchment storage needs alongside Environment Agency led work.

A devolved North Yorkshire will be set up during this time with significant aspirations to develop blue/green infrastructure and climate resilience this along with the mature catchment partnerships and a desire to work strategically across administrative boundaries will support a holistic catchment wide approach to climate resilience.

A permanent strategic approach to whole catchment management of flood risk and climate resilience needs will be sought through this work to support the development of long-term funding and delivery strategies.

Lessons learned

Despite ongoing works, the York Five Year Plan has already achieved its major target to better protect 2000 homes and businesses in York. A range of review and lessons learnt workshops were carried out to recognise this and develop a set of recommendations that could be shared with the wider flood risk community and the framework providers that have developed the scheme.

Although resource intensive, the approach of developing a range of flood cells across an urban area in tandem was seen to have delivered significant gains in terms of co-development, shared goals and partnership working. Many aspects of scheme appraisal, design and delivery presented difficult problems with often complex solutions, but all partners were able to work together to overcome these.

The agreed approach to adaptive resilience is indicative of a forward-thinking partnership and will hopefully help in the development of a sustainable and effective strategic level delivery model as the innovation project commences. The sheer size of the innovation work will deliver many areas of learning, but it is too soon to reflect on these at present.

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Flood defences need complete rethink, says Environment Agency

David Cameron visits areas worst hit as EA deputy warns the UK’s climate is entering an era of ‘unknown extremes’

David Cameron has visited some of the areas worst hit by flooding as experts warned that the UK’s climate was entering an era of “unknown extremes”.

Communities in York, Greater Manchester , Leeds and scores of towns and villages across the north of England faced a daunting clearup as the scale of the flood damage became apparent.

Five hundred troops were mobilised to help with the emergency effort, with a further 1,000 on standby.

The prime minister, who has been criticised for failing to heed warnings about the flood threat , posted a picture of himself with soldiers in York, where hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes as the water levels rose.

I've been meeting some of the military doing so much to help people hit by floods in York. pic.twitter.com/K5jnnRN8AE — David Cameron (@David_Cameron) December 28, 2015

The flooding in York was made worse when the Foss barrier was damaged by the rising waters and Cameron admitted flood defences do not “always do enough”.

“After any one of these events it’s right to sit down and look at what you’ve spent, what you’ve built, look at what you’re planning to spend, look at what you’re planning to build and work out is it in the right places?” he told Sky News.

He denied there was a north-south divide in spending on flood defences following criticism in Leeds and Manchester. He said more was spent per head of the population in the north than the south.

“Are we doing it in the right way … we need to ask all of those questions,” he said.

Cameron’s visit came hours after the Environment Agency’s deputy chief executive said the UK’s climate was entering an era of unknown extremes, and that a complete rethink of flood protection and resilience across the country was needed.

David Rooke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there needed to be a move to greater general resilience to flooding, for example by changing the way homes are designed so that floods do less damage and people can return to their properties more quickly when they do flood.

“We are moving from known extremes to unknown extremes,” he said, adding that the government’s review of flood defences, announced after the earlier floods in Cumbria, was crucial. “We need to reassess all defences across the country and what protection is needed in the future.”

Rooke said the rethink needed to be more widespread. “We will need to have that complete rethink and I think we will need to move from not just providing better defences – and we have a £2.3bn programme to do that over the next six years – but looking at increasing resilience so that, when properties do flood, they’ve got solid floors, we have waterproof plaster, we’ve moved the electrics up the wall, people can get back into their homes and their businesses very quickly and that we continue to improve our flood warning systems so that, in the event of defences overtopping, people have time to take action and we can save lives.”

The environment secretary, Elizabeth Truss, announced a national flood resilience review two weeks ago. The review will see the government updating worst case scenario planning, considering the future impacts of climate change and carrying out a risk assessment of critical infrastructure such as electricity substations.

The Conservative peer Lord Deben, chair of the government’s advisory committee on climate change, accused ministers of failing to match the UK’s words at the recent UN climate conference in Paris with action at home.

The committee’s recommendations for “measures which would stop some of the real damage” had not been taken up, he said.

That included using the Housing Act to prevent further developments in at-risk areas and giving water companies a statutory role in the planning process.

“All those things would help us make things better in the future but I am afraid so far no government – Labour, Conservative or coalition – has been prepared to take those steps,” the Tory former environment secretary told the Today programme.

“If you go to Paris and you say climate change is as serious as it is; if you take a leading part in changing the world’s attitude, which is what this government did; if you contribute large sums, very generously, to helping poorer countries do something about their adaptation, you really do have to look at what is happening in Britain and take the sort of steps that are necessary to protect the people of Britain in the future,” Deben said.

He dismissed calls, however, to fund flood measures by reducing foreign aid. “We should certainly be helping the overseas aid because they are going to affect our climate just as much as we affect our own,” he said.

“But we should also be doing something about our own adaptation, just as we should stop building houses that we are going to have to retrofit within 20 years because we haven’t done what we should have done about insulation and protection for them.

“We really do have to look forward and put into practice what we have said so clearly at the Paris discussions, where we took a leading part.”

Storm Frank is expected to bring more rain to the west and north of the UK on Wednesday. It is feared that up to 80mm (3in) will fall on high ground and as much as 120mm (4.7in) in exposed locations, accompanied by gale force winds.

An extra 200 troops have been dispatched to the worst-hit areas to join the 300 already helping communities cope with the flooding. Downing Street said on Sunday night that a further 1,000 military personnel were on standby “should the situation worsen”.

Amid warnings that climate change would lead to more frequent and severe flooding, the state of the large-scale defences was brought into sharp relief after pumping equipment in York was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of water.

In a move that apparently sacrificed some areas in order to prevent greater devastation elsewhere, officials decided at the weekend to raise the river Foss flood barrier in order to prevent it from becoming stuck. Hundreds of homes were evacuated and entire streets were submerged. York’s barrier, completed in 1987 following serious flooding in 1982, also experienced problems in 2012 when four of its eight pumps failed due to overheating, resulting in flood warnings for hundreds of householders.

Charlie Croft, from York city council, confirmed on Monday morning that river waters in the city had peaked, telling the BBC: “We have to say that we are still in the middle of a major incident, though tentative positive news is that the river may now have stopped rising at this point.”

Floods continued to bring chaos to thousands of homes and businesses elsewhere across the north of England. In Leeds, main roads in the city centre remained under water. In Greater Manchester , 7,000 homes were still without power after rivers topped their banks.

While experts have cautioned that it is too early to give precise figures for the losses caused by Storm Desmond and Storm Eva, the accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said that an initial analysis showed that they could run as high as £1.3bn.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, called for a cross-party consensus to ensure that investment in flood resilience does not fall victim to politics, while a council leader in a flood-hit part of Yorkshire said measures needed to extend beyond spending on major flood defence schemes. McDonnell said he was ready to agree levels of spending on measures to adapt to climate change with the chancellor, George Osborne, to ensure that investment continues whoever wins the next election.

The leader of Calderdale council, Tim Swift, said: “It’s obvious that the scale of flooding events over the last 10 years has been dramatically greater than anything we’ve had before, and without getting into an argument, even if you put the most generous interpretation on what the government is doing, the level of flood resilience funding hasn’t increased to match that.

“One of the big questions we will be asking is what the most effective response is. We’re pretty clear it needs to be about the whole system. There is still a case for major flood defence schemes, but we also want to look at land management and drainage as well. Calderdale needs a comprehensive solution.”

In York, where 3,500 homes were at risk near the rivers Ouse and Foss, there were calls for the state of flood defences and funding to be reviewed. Among the worst affected was the area around Huntingdon Road, close to the city centre, where vehicles and homes were partially submerged.

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Assessing the economic impacts of IT service shutdown during the York flood of 2015 in the UK

2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

In this paper we focus on the ‘Christmas’ flood in York (UK), 2015. The case is special in the sense that little infrastructure was lost or damaged, while a single industry (IT services) was completely knocked out for a limited time. Due to these characteristics, the standard modelling techniques are no longer appropriate. An alternative option is provided by the Hypothetical Extraction Method, or HEM. However, there are restrictions in using the HEM, one being that no realistic substitutes exist for inputs from industries that were affected. In this paper we discuss these restrictions and show that the HEM performs well in the York flood case. In the empirical part of this paper we show that a three-day shutdown of the IT services caused a £3.24 m to £4.23 m loss in York, which is equivalent to 10% of the three days&#39; average GVA (Gross Value Added) of York city. The services sector (excluding IT services) sustained the greatest loss at £0.80 m, where the business support indust...

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