PLANS to protect a village near York from further disastrous flooding are to be presented to the public.

A meeting, organised by Elvington parish councillors, will take place in the village's primary school at 7.30pm on Tuesday, April 5.

Parish council chairman Ian Bailey said it would be an opportunity for residents to find out more about the proposed scheme to prevent the village being repeatedly cut off by floodwaters.

Mr Bailey had previously warned that the need for defences was a matter of life or death, saying that floodwaters often made the village inaccessible to emergency services.

He said the consequences could be fatal if someone suffered a heart attack or went into labour, or a house caught fire, and also revealed that children often ended up wading through raw sewage on their way to school. He said the meeting would be divided into three parts. Firstly, there would be a presentation explaining how the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee was being recommended to provide up to £220,000 in local authority funding for two key elements of a flood defence scheme.

It would explain how the money would be used to build an embankment and sluice to stop floodwater from the River Derwent backing up a beck and into the village, flooding roads and causing more than a hundred homes to be cut off from the outside world.

Residents would then be told how another £160,000 was still needed to complete the scheme through the installation of a pumping station.

This would be used to pump water from the beck into the river when the sluice was closed, so that beckwater did not itself back up and flood the roads.

Villagers would be asked for their help in identifying and contacting organizations who might be able to provide assistance.

Questions would then be invited from the floor to a panel of key figures involved in the proposals.

He said Selby MP John Grogan, Environment Agency officials and City of York councillor Andrew Waller - a member of the regional flood committee -had all been invited to attend.

Updated: 08:38 Thursday, March 24, 2005