RESIDENTS and councillors are backing calls for a two-year reprieve for plans to protect Pickering from flooding.

They say action must be taken by the Environment Agency to prevent a repeat of the disastrous floods of 1999 and 2000, and the town must not be abandoned to its fate.

They are supporting Ryedale MP John Greenway's call for Pickering to be treated as a "special case" for another two years, after the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee delayed the scheme on Thursday.

Mr Greenway has warned that unless Floods Minister Elliot Morley extended the town's special case status, it would become too low a priority to have any realistic hope of ever getting a scheme. But if the Minister agreed to his idea, the extra two years would give the agency a chance to come up with an acceptable project.

Town and district councillor Natalie Warriner supported the MP, saying Pickering was the only one of eight schemes intended for fast-tracking after the floods of 2000 which had still not gone ahead.

"We have been left out in the cold and I am absolutely furious," she said.

"They have spent £700,000 on investigating this and they need to get their act together. The least they can do is give a two-year extension."

Town mayor Judy Dixon, stressing that she was giving a personal opinion rather than speaking on behalf of all councillors, said flooding impacted on a number of commercial properties and community activities as well as domestic households.

She believed that the proposed flood walls in the agency's original scheme had been too high, but it had eventually come up with environmentally-acceptable proposals.

Resident Peter Croot, whose property is close to the beck responsible for all the flooding, said he and other householders had been pressing for action to tackle the problem.

News of a possible reprieve had come as a "bit of a relief," and he hoped the MP succeeded in his request.

Updated: 09:28 Saturday, January 17, 2004