Yorkshire Flood Resilience and University of Hull to host free Climate Café events

The Climate Cafés are free to attend and open to anyone with an interest in flood resilience and climate change. They will focus on the increasing risk of flooding, and the significant disruption and damage it can cause, as well as highlighting the role that property flood resilience measures can play in minimising the risk of homes and businesses flooding.

Property flood resilience is a term used to describe measures that reduce the risk of flood damage to our properties, speed up recovery and help us to move back into our properties quicker after flooding. These measures are installed in our homes or businesses to make them less vulnerable to flooding.

Yorkshire Flood Resilience Project Manager Steve Wragg said: “We’re delighted to be working with the University of Hull’s Energy and Environment Institute to run these events. We have some really interesting guest speakers lined up and there will be plenty of time for guests to chat to them afterwards. I do hope that as many local people as possible will come along to the events to find out more about property flood resilience.”

Dr Steven Forrest, Lecturer in Flood Resilience and Sustainable Transformations at the Energy and Environment Institute at the University of Hull, said: “This will be a great opportunity to hear from speakers with a diverse range of experiences in dealing with floods. Flood risk is becoming an increasingly urgent problem and we need to work together to help society cope with future floods. We’re looking forward to working with Yorkshire Flood Resilience to run these Climate Cafés and answer questions that people may have about dealing with floods in Hull and York.”

Phil Foxley, Environment Agency Flood Risk Programme Manager, said: “Promoting the use of property flood resilience (PFR) measures is a crucial part of our long-term vision to better protect homes and businesses from flooding to create climate resilient places.

“We want to ensure people have access to the information and other measures – such as PFR – that they need to plan ahead for flooding and ‘Prepare, Act, Survive’. So we would encourage local residents and business owners to hear practical advice, at an event or online, about reducing the damage of flooding and getting back into their homes or businesses quicker after a flood.”

The York event will take place at City Screen (off Coney Street) on Thursday 2 September and the Hull event will take place at The Deep on Thursday 16 September. Both events will begin at 5.30pm and feature a series of short presentations by experts on flood resilience and members of the public who have been affected by flooding. Free refreshments will be available at both events and there will be an opportunity for people to chat with the speakers informally after the presentations. Although places at the Climate Café events are free, tickets must be booked in advance via Eventbrite.

To book a place at the Hull event visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-cafe-tickets-164742167257.

To book a place at the York event, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-cafe-tickets-165729789261.