WORK finally starts this week on a £7.7 million scheme to protect 135 York homes from flooding by the River Ouse.

The Environment Agency says the flood defences in Clementhorpe, off Terry Avenue, are a "very complex engineering project" and it has had to overcome a number of hurdles to bring them to fruition.

The scheme is part of a £45 million investment in flood alleviation across the city, which will better protect 2,000 homes and was agreed by the Government after the devastating floods of 2015.

Streets in Clementhorpe such as River Street were inundated then, and were even more badly affected in November 2000, when the river rose to 5.4 metres above normal summer levels.

The community was at risk once again earlier this year, when residents were told by the council they could evacuate their homes and stay in a hotel if they wished, but the area escaped without flooding.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell has previously criticised the speed with which new flood defences have been installed in York, so many years after the 2015 floods.

Agency spokesman Ben Hughes said yesterday that the new scheme was a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to reduce the risk of flooding to 135 homes.

He said: “We are very pleased that we’ve now received final approval from City of York Council to start construction on this section of the scheme.

“This section of work is a very complex engineering project and there have been a number of hurdles we have had to overcome to bring it to fruition.”

He said the work would see more than 500 metres of new flood defences installed in sections between Skeldergate Bridge and Millennium Bridge, on the Rowntree Park side of the River Ouse.

It would include:

• New flood gates at the bottom of Clementhorpe

• The construction of seven flood walls

• The construction of an embankment

• 240m of below ground seepage mitigation under Terry Avenue

• The raising of the road at the bottom of Butcher Terrace.

Mr Hughes said that as part of the construction programme, Terry Avenue would be closed between its junctions with Skeldergate and Roomzzz Hotel, for approximately 12 months, starting in April.

“The first stage of the work will involve building the construction compound on the football pitch at the south end of Rowntree Park,” he said.

He added that the agency aimed to complete the work by the end of next year.

He said most of the cost had been funded by Defra, with City of York Council contributing £317,000.