THE massive bill for flood defences elsewhere in Yorkshire could leave York short of funds for years to come, a councillor warned today.

A billion pounds may need to be spent on protecting Hull and other communities from the Humber, and another £200 million defending Leeds, said Coun Andrew Waller.

On a national level, huge expenditure will be needed to defend 200,000 new homes which are set to be built around the Thames.

"Both of these illustrate how the national pot will have to grow to ensure that the York area gets an adequate allocation of funding for what we need," said Coun Waller, who is City of York Council's representative on the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee.

He said the Government had centralised the allocation of funding, and started talking about the "national spend" rather than regional support, and this area could suffer even more from the massive expenditure needed to defend London and the South East.

He said the committee chairman, Jeremy Walker, had agreed to take such points forward to national meetings.

However, Coun Waller said he was convinced that the proposed upgrading of at least one flood defence scheme in York - in the Leeman Road area - would still be able to go ahead.

He said £1.6 million was needed to improve the flood embankments in the area, which came close to being overwhelmed in the floods of November 2000.

"These will need investigations to assess the conditions of the existing defences before work is commissioned in following years," he said.

He said the committee had agreed to allocate £50,000 from the Local Levy programme for 2006/07 to assist further investigations into whether flood defences could be provided for Pickering, which was also badly hit by flooding in 2000.

This money would be a contribution towards a partnership scheme, involving a fairly large contribution from Ryedale District Council, to pay for an officer to work on the scheme rather than pay for physical works.

Updated: 09:33 Thursday, April 27, 2006