HOUSEHOLDERS devastated by flooding were outraged today by proposals to charge them a special "flood plain tax" to pay for new defences.

The controversial idea emerged in an independent review commissioned by the Government to examine the way defences are funded.

Floods Minister Elliot Morley, announcing a three-month consultation on the proposals, has vowed that the Government will continue to foot the "bulk" of the bill.

But he is reviewing the way the remaining 35 per cent of the total spent on bolstering defences is provided.

At the moment, local authorities from across Yorkshire are asked by a regional flood defence committee to pay a levy to the Environment Agency.

But last year, the rest of Yorkshire threatened to scupper works needed in North and East Yorkshire by refusing to stump up a big levy increase.

Today's report by the Oxford Economic Research Associates proposes the replacement of the flood committees with Regional Customer Bodies, which would receive money

direct from the Government.

The bodies would then have one of three options for raising any

extra cash they wanted to spend on defence work:

A special tax targeted on homeowners at risk of flooding, which would almost certainly apply to parts of York, Selby and a number of villages hit by recent floods

A one-off charge on developers who wish to build on flood plains

Levying a region-wide precept in the same way as at present.

Di Keal, whose Norton home was flooded in both 1998 and 2000, condemned the plan as "outrageous."

She said: "It is the equivalent of saying if you are old and use the NHS a lot then you should pay more for health services. Flooding is a community responsibility."

Ros Amor, another flood victim from Barlby, near Selby, was disgusted by the suggestion, adding: "We were never aware that we lived in an area which had a flood risk.

"We have been promised that things will be done - all of Yorkshire is waiting."

York MP Hugh Bayley also said the levy should be on everyone, not just flood victims, but he backed the scrapping of the current flood defence committee system. "It looks like precisely what I have been arguing for," he said.

Mr Morley said the current committee system had led to government cash going unspent.

He said there were two sides to the argument over whether people who have already suffered the misery of flooding should be hit in the pocket. Some said the cost should be spread across a whole region, while others said people most at risk would get the main benefit and maybe ought to pay the bulk of the contribution

Updated: 11:23 Thursday, February 14, 2002