How businesses in Fossgate and Walmgate are coping one year after the Boxing Day floods

The flood waters that had risen on Boxing Day had poured through the front of owner Ken Heald’s salon, covering the floor of the salon to a depth of a foot – and a passage at the back to a depth of two feet.

There were no pumps. So Ken had improvised, organising a human chain of family, staff and helpful passers-by to scoop up water in plastic wheelie bins, haul it through to the front of the salon, then tip it into the street.

When The Press came to call, Ken was standing amid the devastation, trying to put a brave face on things. “It’s amazing how many of my customers have been in touch to see how we are,” he said. “There’s a lot of loyalty and support out there.”

Fast forward a year, and how different things are.

Mamselle’s has been completely done out, top to bottom. It’s warm, bright and busy – those customers, Ken says, are as loyal and supportive as ever.

Standing in the middle of the new-look salon as a client arrives for an early appointment, Ken can’t keep a note of satisfaction out of his voice. “I’m very proud of it now,” he says.

Proud: Ken Heald in his Fossgate salon Mamselle's

He has every right to be. Make no mistake, though: for Ken, it has been a tough year. And in some ways, things may never get back to quite what they were.

He can’t get floods insurance, for a start, despite his broker’s best efforts. So he’s got ordinary insurance, but no flood cover. “When it rains, it’s scary.”.

He’d also been relying on selling the business one day as a nest-egg for his retirement. “But who wants a property that’s going to flood?” he asks.

Until last year, Ken’s salon had never flooded in the 48 years he’d been there. But on Boxing Day, he got a funny feeling. He rang one of the tenants living above the salon, and asked them to look out of the window.

Half an hour later they rang back. “They said: ‘I think you’d better come!’”

He did. The water was already up on the Walmgate side of the bridge over the Foss. “And I just watched it come,” he says.

He called the council to ask for sandbags. They were promised, but never arrived. “It must have been absolute chaos,” he admits.

He and his staff stacked as much as they could out of the way of the water: but there wasn’t much more they could do. Water poured in through the front door, flooding the salon. Hence that human chain...

Business is good: Sarah Lakin at the Fossgate Social

Once the water had gone down, Ken was able to put his large hairdryers to a different use – drying out the salon’s floor. In just a few days, he’d set up an impromptu salon in a small room at the back of the shop. Clients had to pick their way through the rubble in the front of the salon, which was still being stripped and cleared out. But Ken kept the business going. “My customers have been absolutely brilliant,” he says.

The salon reopened properly in April after a refit.

So, a year on and with the Environment Agency having installed eight new pumps in the Foss Barrier in an attempt to ensure it won’t be overwhelmed again, is he a bit more confident? He hums and haws. “I don’t know what they’ve done,” he says. “But I feel out on a limb now. It does feel as though you’ve had the rug pulled from under you a bit.”

Sarah Lakin at the Fossgate Social is more optimistic. Their cellar flooded a year ago, although the water never got into the coffee shop and bar itself. Since then, they’ve moved equipment up out of the cellar, and opened up another floor above. Things are going well, Sarah says.

But what about the future? Does she have confidence in the city’s improved flood defences? “I believe so,” she says. “I understand that what happened was fairly unusual.” That said, she accepts that flooding events are probably going to be more frequent in future. “And we cannot keep building higher and higher walls.”

Hairy Fig: open for business, but the floods took their toll, says boss Sue Hardie

Sue Hardie at the Hairy Fig across the street lost all her stock – beautiful cheeses, hams, salamis, quality chocolates – when the shop flooded a year ago. It remained closed until May. “You never get that back,” she says.

She has been able to get insurance – but only after seeing premiums tripled and the floods excess whacked up to £25,000. And she admits she’s “not very confident” that the improved Foss barrier will provide real protection. “I’m just hoping it (another flood) doesn’t happen.”

But at least Fossgate and Walmgate are beginning to get back to something like normal. The Blue Bicycle has yet to reopen. But Loch Fyne opened again a few weeks ago after an extensive refit. And businesses at the top end of Walmgate are very much open for business as usual.

A year ago Wendy Hudson, the manager of Hambleton Furniture, stood at the edge of the floodwaters by the ‘no entry’ sign at the top of Walmgate and could only look at her drowned shop. “There was somebody behind me laughing, and I could have turned around and slapped them,” she says.

We're Open! Wendy Hudson at Hambleton Furniture in Walmgate

She, too, lost all her stock. But for the next few months, she managed to keep the business going via her mobile phone, taking orders and arranging for deliveries. The shop officially reopened at the end of April – and this week, it will be having a post Christmas sale. “We’re open for business!” Wendy says.

Quantum estate agents next door also had to close up shop for three months. But business continued, with staff crowding into the Bishopthorpe branch, says partner Adele Barlow. For a while, they were busier than ever because so many people whose homes had been flooded were looking for somewhere to rent.

They then lost some customers – people tended to assume they had closed. But a year on, things are back to normal. And Adele is fairly confident that the improvements to the Foss Barrier should prevent a recurrence of the floods. She hopes so, at least. “If it went all wrong again... that would be disastrous.”

Quantum estate agents: business is back to normal

Across the road at the Cats Protection League charity shop, manager Amanda Thompson is less convinced. She, too, lost all her stock. “The water was this high,” she says, indicating her hip. It drained quickly – but left a horrible sludge behind.

Her shop has been refitted to be more flood resilient and reopened officially on August 19.

So does she believe the improved Foss barrier now offers real protection? “I’m not going to say I’m 100 per cent confident, because you never can be,” she says. “Conditions are changing, and we’re going to have more flooding than we used to.”

Bouncing back: Sonja Cockerill and Jenny Metcalfe at the Cats Protection Charity Shop in Walmgate

THE HOUSEHOLDER

JOHN Wheatcroft and his wife Kay were at home in their Edwardian terrace on Huntington Road on Boxing Day last year. They remember standing chatting to their neighbour while the water lapped at the garden gate, wondering if it would come any higher.

They prepared for the worst - trying to stack things out of the way, and packing bags in case they had to leave quickly - but hoped for the best. They went to bed, where John slept fitfully until about 5am. He then got up to check what had happened - and found a puddle of water in the hall. "It was a bit of a shocker," he admits.

It's been a touch year for the 62-year-old freelance journalist and writer and his wife. They were put up in a York hotel for a while, then could have moved into temporary rented accommodation. They opted instead to move back into their own home in March while builders repaired the house around them. "We were living amidst all the rubble, with a kettle and a microwave." But at least they were on hand to deal with all the questions that arose during the repairs and redecoration.

Tough year: John Wheatcroft

The work was finally finished in September: so they've had three months of a relatively normal life at least. One year on from the flood, how confident is he that the improvements to the Foss barrier will prevent a recurrence? "We're reasonably reassured by what we've seen," he says. He still thinks there are unanswered questions about what happened and why the flood barrier had to be lowered a year ago, however. "I think there were inconsistencies in what we were told."

FLOOD DEFENCES: how have they improved since a year ago?

In the year since the Boxing Day floods, the Environment Agency has installed eight new pumps at the Foss barrier, raising the barrier’s capacity from 30 tonnes of water a second to 40. That’s roughly the volume of water that was pouring down the Foss at the peak of the floods a year ago. On that basis, the improved barrier should just about be able to cope with a repeat.

By the end of next year, the agency says, the addition of a new power supply will have further increased the barrier’s capacity, to 50 tonnes a second.

The agency also unveiled this year details of how it plans to spend up to £60 million (new government funding of £45 million plus £15 million already in the kitty for flood improvements) upgrading the rest of York’s flood defences as part of a five-year plan.

The proposals include:

• Removable barriers to extend the height of existing flood walls at Marygate and North Street
• Raising the embankment at Rawcliffe
• Modifying Naburn weir so that it could be lowered to release flood water more quickly
• Proper flood defences for Clementhorpe
• New pumping stations at the Blue Beck in Rawcliffe.

The agency is still looking at options and outline plans for all the above proposals and more, but says work should start in 2018.

A spokesman said it would never be possible to prevent all floods. “But we are confident that the work we have done to the Foss barrier means that it will be able to deal with a similar flood to that which was experienced in December 2015.”

The Boxing Day floods in figures. Graphic supplied by City of York Council

Cllr Andrew Waller, executive member for the environment on City of York Council, said his authority had also learned lessons.

Procedures had been reviewed, and discussions had been held with the York CVS, so that in case of further floods, the CVS would co-ordinate the response of volunteers who wanted to help out.

Given the reality of climate change, there could be no guarantees against an extreme event, Cllr Waller said. But the improvements to the flood barrier, taken with the projected improvements to the rest of the city’s flood defences over the next five years, should mean York was better prepared to deal with severe flood events caused by climate change for ‘as long as we can project forward’.