CONSULTANTS are to help decide how £60 million should be spent on improving York’s flood defences over the next five years.

The Environment Agency is moving forward with a huge programme to help protect communities across the city from a repeat of December 2015, when hundreds of homes and businesses were inundated.

It has pledged to carry out a full consultation with residents, including a number of drop-ins, once a detailed programme has been finalised.

The Government agreed to provide £45 million towards new and improved flood defences, on top of the £15 million already in the five year programme and of the £17 million being spent on upgrading the Foss Barrier and Pumping Station, which failed in 2015 because of the sheer volume of water coming down the Foss.

The agency unveiled an action plan last autumn, which looked at a range of potential measures in 10 separate areas of York, which included raising and building new flood walls and new embankments, creating new flood storage areas and building new pumping stations.

An agency spokesman said yesterday it was currently assessing the tenders which had been received and expected to be able to announce the appointment of consultants who would be undertaking the appraisal of the plan in May.

“After their appointment, we will be working with our suppliers to develop a detailed programme of work,” he said.

“This will consider a number of key issues including the current level of defence and key environmental constraints which we need to address.

“We will start direct discussion with the communities as soon as the programme has been finalised. As part of the consultation we will be arranging a number of public drop-ins.”

He said planning the first tranche of schemes would be one of the first key decisions and detailed investigations would commence as soon as the consultants had been appointed.

“There are investigations due to start in the Foss Barrier/Clementhorpe area in June,” he said, adding that representatives of the Environment Agency would be attending the Fishergate Ward meeting this evening to discuss what could be done in the Grange Garth and New Walk areas.