DECEMBER 5 marks the third anniversary of Storm Desmond. In Kendal alone more than 2,000 properties, homes and businesses, were flooded.

Similar havoc was wreaked throughout South Lakeland; homes, bridges and roads were destroyed and lives devastated.

Despite the magnificent community spirit of the clean-up, marked by the Gazette's 'Flood Heroes' reporting, progress towards stopping such ruination from future floods can best be described as glacially slow.

In September the Environment Agency (EA), in charge of flood protection measures, reported progress at a series of public meetings. The details of their plans are still imprecise and their implications are not easy to grasp. After reading in detail the several complex reports and discussing them with EA officers and with local politicians I give below my 'layman's interpretation' of what is planned; it may surprise you.

Firstly, none of the measures planned by the EA for Kendal will give protection against another Storm Desmond event or against the worse-than-Desmond events foreseen by the Met Office as a result of climate change.

The EA is designing to protect Kendal against a one in 100 year probability of flooding. Desmond greatly exceeded this. As happened in Keswick in December 2015, the designed protection of the Kendal plan would be exceeded and defences overtopped by a 'Desmond' or a 'Desmond+'. Protection to a 'Desmond' level would be technically near-impossible and prohibitively expensive.

Secondly, the full benefits of the flood defences planned will not be in place for several years yet.

Kendal defences rely on raising riverside bunds and walls through the town, building two large holding 'reservoirs' on upstream flood plains to hold back the peaks of future flood flows and redesigning and enlarging the Stockbeck system.

The walls and bunds will be built over the next few years, giving improved but partial protection. Work on the Stockbeck system will be to a similar timetable.

The two upstream 'reservoirs' are still to be decided and negotiated and will not be operational for several years. Similar but smaller flood protection schemes in Selkirk in the Borders and in Morpeth in Northumberland took more than eight years to complete.

Thirdly, the EA is planning no significant changes to the flow through the bridges in Kendal or to gravel removal. These fundamental constraints on flood flow will remain. Similarly, no measurable short-term benefits are expected from the £ 2.8m set aside for experimental upstream 'soft' measures, such as tree planting and 'leaky dams' to slow the flow.

Finally, if EU funding is approved, the first spade-in-the-ground work is likely to be raising bunds and walls around Mintsfeet to protect industry and jobs and some nearby housing.

If the water can't go through Mintsfeet and down Shap Road/Wildman Street as it did during 'Desmond', it will increase the flow in the river and into the north end of the town. The proposed diversion of some Stockbeck water into the Mint upstream of Morrisons will have the same effect. These short-term negative effects should disappear as the full scheme comes to fruition.

While the proposed measures are not ideal I believe it is the best we can hope for and we will be best served by managing our expectations, supporting the EA and urging our political representatives at every level from Euro MP to town councillors to secure the biggest budget possible from central government and from Europe and to get the job done as quickly as possible!

Ian Kell

Mealbank