FLOOD defence plans have proven to be a point of conflict between the council and the Environment Agency.

Leading Environment Agency officers gave an update on efforts to bolster Carlisle's flood defences to the city council on Thursday.

The Economic Growth Scrutiny Committee heard of progress on ongoing flood defence schemes and the flood authority's plans for the future.

Phase one of flood defence works surrounding Melbourne Park involve the raising and strengthening of existing defences. Embankments were raised from Tesco Carlisle to Trinity School.

Work surrounding the Old Laundry Culvert as Phase 1B is currently being constructed.

Phase two involves an area from Trinity School, running along the existing defences and tying into Dacre Road.

As previously reported, Phase three works for the Caldewgate, Denton Holme and Willow Holme area will not be as originally planned. The Environment Agency revealed that the desired standard of flood protection could not be achieved with the funds available.

Labour councillor, Anne Glendinning said: "I have some concern when you start talking about phase three because there's no dates in this report, you have mentioned some dates, 2024/2025 but what worries me is it looks like you're having to start again with the feasibility study. You may have got the funding for the feasibility study but there's no other funding to actually do the scheme."

The EA applied for funding for a feasibility study to identify a the options for managing flood resilience in the Caldew Corridor and received approval in August 2021.

Cllr Glendinning said: "So it's going to be quite a while before anything's done on the ground and for residents and the businesses in those areas, it's very worrying round the Caldew."

"And I think they need some kind of assurance, there's nothing in this report and certainly nothing I picked up from what you said.

"Is there going to be anything done in the meantime to at least mitigate and give them some kind of protection until the proper full scheme is going to go?"

Stewart Mounsey said: "We as an organisation want to provide full protection to people as quickly as we can. The Caldew has already got set defences in there. The biggest event in the Caldew was 2012 and it clearly was impacted in Storm Desmond as well.

"We went through a process of 'what can we do as quickly as we can with the original business case?' And What that started to turn out was actually that wouldn't give us the standard of protection we wanted in the long term.

"As with all public money, we've got to be really careful, we can spend it once. So if we went ahead with a scheme that wasn't going to deliver the best for that area of Carlisle in the long term, then we've already spent that money when we come back to, there's an issue in five, 10 years time."

The Environment Agency has looked at temporary defences for the meantime but it would not have been possible to carry them out safely.

Investigations will take place in the Heysham Park, Shaddongate area in 2024/25 as flood mapping indicates that it is a potential risk. Work is underway to identify the cause of flooding issues in Etterby Terrace.