The floods that wrought havoc in York and other northern towns and cities were bad enough.

But to now find that we're being taxed for the clean-up effort - that's just ridiculous.

It has emerged that flood-hit communities across the country are being expected to pay tax on the mountains of damaged furniture and household goods that have had to be dumped in landfill.

The so-called 'landfill tax' is designed to increase recycling rates by making local authorities pay tax on anything that ends up in landfill rubbish dumps.

The problem is that councils have no choice but to put flood-damaged household goods into landfill, because they are deemed 'contaminated', so can't be recycled.

The Local Government Association estimates that, as a result, across the country councils in areas hit by flooding will have to pay as much as £2.25 million extra in landfill tax.

We don't know exactly how much the cost to York will be in the long run. What we do know is that, up to January 20, the council collected 210 tonnes of rubbish from skips outside flood-damaged homes. That alone will cost the authority £17,000. And it doesn't take account of damaged electrical goods, carpets and furniture that householders took to rubbish dumps themselves - or of anything dumped after January 20. The final amount of landfill tax the council has to pay out will certainly be much higher.

This is effectively a tax on flooding. And it seems crazy that areas already devastated by floods should have to pay it.

The Local Government Authority is calling on the government to give back to councils in flood-hit areas the landfill tax they incurred while the clear-up was under way.

We couldn't agree more.