Support was provided to residents of South Yorkshire during storms Eunice and Franklin however the recently built flood defences managed to protect the majority of the area.
Ever since the storms that affected South Yorkshire in 2019, the area has been supported by the community in the hope to avoid further disasters in the years to come. This support was mainly provided by the South Yorkshire's Community Foundation.
A report published by the South Yorkshire Community Foundation(SYCF) last August stated that funding that had been raised by the community as well as from the Central Government and National Lottery Community raised over 1.4 million pounds for victims of the flood.
This meant that the organisation was able to provide financial aid, according to the Chief Executive of SYCF, Ruth Willis as she said:
“As our Flood Evaluation Report detailed, SYCF distributed over £1.4m to 1,468 households and 14 community groups during the last major flooding in 2019 across South Yorkshire with Doncaster and the towns of Bentley and Fishlake, badly impacted.”
It is also detailed in the report that the organisation believes that anyone that had been evacuated from their homes during the floods has now been fully returned.
As of the most recent storms, the flood defences that had been installed in South Yorkshire since the floods of 2019 meant the majority of residents were safe from extensive damage this year.
According to Akhlaq Hanif, the Marketing and Communications Coordinator of SYCF, the organisation wasn’t needed for these recent storms as he said:
"We kept a keen eye on the situation and spoke to our partners but thankfully, as the weather calmed down and existing flood defences came to the fore, we weren't required for further extensive support"
Some areas of South Yorkshire were still affected by these storms, especially farmland in Doncaster, however, some residents believe that further defences could have been supported through natural causes such as the Peatland that is commonly found in Yorkshire.
There is a large belief that the extraction of Peatland may have possibly made flooding worse due to the environmental issues it has caused.
One user on Twitter said: “Keeping Peat in the ground is our best natural defence against floods”
According to the England Peat Action Plan restoring the Peatland would also have positive effects on global warming as the restoration would deliver carbon benefits and therefore also make the process cost-effective.
Although it would appear that the floods have been tackled for now, this is still an issue for various areas of South Yorkshire, those that wish to support the community, in general, can still donate to the SYCF as well as find out more here.