Upland landowners in North Yorkshire who save cities and towns downstream from flooding could get compensation
By Alexandra Wood
[...]
North Yorkshire and City of York councils will get £1m a year between 2021 and 2027 from the fund, which seeks to develop and test new approaches to tackling mainland flooding and coastal erosion. It comes after floods devastated swathes of the authorities’ areas in 2012, 2015, 2019 and most recently last February, when around 100 properties were flooded.
[...]
Coun Don Mackenzie, the county council’s executive member for access, said he was delighted the bid, involving the University of York had been successful. He said they would be looking “at all innovative solutions” to combat flooding, including compensating landowners who allow their land to flood to hold back water.
[...]
The cost of an acre of flooded agricultural land is much less expensive than an acre of the city of York being underwater. It’s simple arithmatics that one can get far better effects by doing that upstream on agricultural land in order to spare extremely expensive and populated areas in cities like York - or Selby, Tadcaster, Malton - all areas which regularly flood.
[...]