Build ban urged on flood plains (From York Press)

Build ban urged on flood plains

A GOVERNMENT report recommended that no more building should take place on flood plains.

The report said the authorities knew which areas were liable to flooding and should avoid them when building.

"Contact is being made throughout the country between the river authorities and the town and country planning authorities to ensure that no more building takes place on land which is bound to be inundated whenever heavy floods occur," it stated.

The report may sound like the latest recommendations to land on Floods Minister Elliot Morley's desk in the wake of the November, 2000, disaster and Britain's more recent further flooding problems.

But the document, called Harvest Home, was published on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1948, following the terrible floods of spring 1947.

The way that house-building has continued on flood plains ever since appears to indicate that ministers don't always follow review recommendations by legislation.

The 1948 report, discovered on a website by Evening Press editorial assistant Rachel Lacy, reveals how badly North Yorkshire suffered when the Ouse burst its banks. Twenty-thousand people had to be fed from field kitchens in Selby alone.

Updated: 16:00 Thursday, February 21, 2002