Harrogate and Knaresborough flood bid: £1.47m for 130 homes

North Yorkshire Council is preparing to bid for £1,474,200 of national flood money to fit flood protection to 130 properties in Harrogate and Knaresborough, two years after a 35 minute storm put water inside more than 50 buildings in Knaresborough.

The plan appears on the council’s forward plan of decisions as the Harrogate and Knaresborough Property Flood Resilience Scheme, first published on 5 August 2026. It asks the Corporate Director of Environment, in consultation with the Chief Finance Officer, to approve two funding applications: £824,200 of Environment Agency Flood Defence Grant in Aid “to enable scheme development through 2028/29”, and £650,000 from the Flood and Coastal Committee Local Levy. The stated purpose is “the delivery of Property Flood Resilience to 130 properties in Harrogate and Knaresborough”.

It is classed as a key decision, with the reason given as “effect on communities”. The decision is due on 23 September 2026.

What property flood resilience actually means

This is not a wall or an embankment across a whole neighbourhood. Property flood resilience is fitted to individual buildings, and the government’s FloodReady action plan groups the measures into three kinds: resistance, “keeping as much water out of the property as possible using measures like flood doors and barriers, self-closing air bricks and non-return valves”; recoverability, “internal adaptations, such as having tiled floors, raised electrics and a flood resilient kitchen”; and reduction, using permeable surfaces, rain gardens and rainwater harvesting to slow run-off at the property itself.

The council’s notice does not list which of those measures the Harrogate and Knaresborough scheme would pay for, or say whether property owners would be asked to contribute. Those details would normally follow a survey of each property once funding is confirmed.

Where the scheme came from

The idea is the council acting on its own investigation. After the Knaresborough flooding, North Yorkshire Council carried out a formal investigation under section 19 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which requires lead local flood authorities to investigate significant flooding and publish the results. That report went to the Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Committee on 25 September 2025.

Its first recommendation was that, “subject to funding eligibility”, the authority should “assess the potential for property level resilience in areas where multiple properties (including Businesses) are at risk from repeated events” (full report). The funding bid published this month is that recommendation reaching the money stage.

What happened on 6 May 2024

The investigation records flooding inside 51 private residences and four businesses in Knaresborough on 6 May 2024. Around 54mm of rain fell in about 35 minutes, more than the average total rainfall for the whole of May, which the report puts at 43mm. Yorkshire Water’s analysis gave the peak intensity a return period of 1 in 516 years.

For context on why drains did not cope, the report sets out the standards they are built to: highway and public sewer drainage is designed to avoid above-ground flooding in a 1 in 30 year event, and household drainage systems “often have a capacity of less than 1 in 10 year”. The council concluded the event “exceeded all current reasonable worst case scenarios and was not something that could be effectively forecasted”.

The flooding was scattered rather than concentrated on one street. The report examines Park Avenue, Orchard Close and Halfpenny Lane, St Margaret’s Gardens, Queen’s Road, Dentdale Drive, Lundale Avenue and Cotterdale Close in detail, and says it deliberately avoids naming individual properties.

What the notice does not say

Three things are missing from the published record, and they matter to anyone hoping to be one of the 130.

The notice does not break the 130 properties down between Harrogate and Knaresborough, and the council has published no equivalent section 19 investigation for a Harrogate flood event. It does not name the streets or areas in scope. And it does not set out how properties will be selected, beyond the section 19 recommendation’s test of “areas where multiple properties (including Businesses) are at risk from repeated events”.

The council names Trish Gourley, flood risk project manager, as the contact for the decision.

What it means for you

If your home or business flooded internally in Harrogate or Knaresborough, the single most useful thing you can do is make sure the council knows. Selection for a scheme like this is driven by records of properties flooding repeatedly, and a flood the authority never recorded cannot count towards that. North Yorkshire Council is the lead local flood authority for surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses, and its flood and water management pages set out how it decides whether to investigate an incident formally, using tests including the number of properties internally flooded and the frequency of flooding in a given location.

Two other things are worth doing now rather than in September. You can check your own property’s long-term flood risk from rivers, the sea, surface water and groundwater on the government’s flood risk map, and you can sign up for free Environment Agency flood warnings. Neither depends on this funding bid.

Keep the timing in perspective. Nothing has been awarded yet. This is a decision to apply, due on 23 September, for money that would fund scheme development running through to 2028/29. If both applications succeed, work on individual properties would follow surveys, not the decision date.

For what is being built and where across the district, see our Harrogate planning news, and for live disruption on the roads, including flooded routes, see Harrogate roadworks and travel.