Ark at this! Council wants flood action at last

An obscurely placed and almost invisible message from council leader Richard Austin appears on the front page of the borough's website.
No, he's not back into blogging just yet.
He's taking up cudgels on the need to do all we can to protect our area for future generations.
"One of the reasons it's so important in this area is because we need to protect our town and our farmland from the potential effects of climate change; across the North Sea people in Holland enjoy a 1:4000 protection from flooding – that means they are protected for a flood that could happen once in 4,000 years," he writes. "In Boston and the rest of England, our flood defences are only 1:200. Over the years this has been accepted as the norm, but the recent floods in Scotland and the concerns in Wales highlight the need to do more across the country."
In tandem with this, the council has produced a petition of sorts saying that it considers that the present flood defence design criteria are inadequate and call for them to be improved as a matter of urgency.
"In the United Kingdom flood defence schemes are designed to provide only a 1 in 200 year standard of protection for coastal defences and 1 in 100 year for fluvial defences.
This compares with a 1 in 4000 year standard provided in Holland for agricultural land and 1 in 10,000 year for built up areas.
"Boston Borough Council calls for funding for flood risk management to be increased to a level which allows all new projects to provide a level of protection nearer to that in Holland.
Attention is drawn to the need to robustly defend property but also high grade land as it is so important in safeguarding the food security of the nation.
The motion ends by calling on the council to send a delegation to present this resolution to an "appropriate minister" at Westminster.
At last!
Our part of the world has been on the brink in terms of flood risk for years, and now the powers that be have latched on to the fact.
Talk about kicking a dinosaur in the tail.....
Boston Eye has been banging on about this since Noah was a lad.
It's not just the threat of flooding - real as it is - that hangs over us.
We've previously drawn attention to the way that greedy insurance companies are taking advantage of home and business owners.
Quite recently we received evidence of one major insurance national ramping premiums by 20-25 per-cent a year over the past three years, and refusing to exclude flood cover when requested by customers who are finding it impossible to pay - putting them at risk of having to forego insurance altogether.
The reality is that whilst Boston is in a high risk area, we are generally fortunate when it comes to actual flooding.
This is something that should be pointed out to insurance companies in no uncertain terms before the borough starts to suffer more economic damage caused by reluctance by individuals and businesses to local here because they cannot get insurance.
And by the way....
Praiseworthy though it is to meet the "appropriate minister" at Westminster, wouldn't it be more prudent to include the appropriate "Shadow" at the same time.
We suspect that ministers will only be paying lip service to petitions at this stage of the game, and to really get some action, the borough should be making its pitch to the government in waiting.

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