CAMPAIGNERS have again called for a rethink of a flood defence scheme for Kendal that they say provides 'false hope'.

The start of the first phase of the controversial £76m scheme is set to begin early this year.

Campaigners argue that the flood plans are misguided and have stressed that they will not protect the town from another storm of the severity of Desmond in 2015.

“We’re absolutely not opposed to a scheme, but we want a realistic whole-catchment approach that works for the community and the environment, and I think at the moment neither of those are really happening,” said Karen Lloyd, researcher at Lancaster University and author.

“The concrete walls are a sticking plaster to a very complicated problem."

Ms Lloyd said there was going to be an 'enormous amount of environmental damage'.

She warned that species that called the vegetation along the river home would disappear when the trees were removed.

“You cannot replace the ecosystem that a bat lives in by planting new trees," she said.

"A lot of mature trees along the river are bat roost sites."

Cheryl Berry, owner of Romneys bar in Kendal, whose house was affected by floodwater during Desmond, warned the scheme would be 'regretted for years to come'.

“This has never been about not putting flood barriers in, but it’s doing the correct ones from the beginning," she said.

“If you’ve got signposts saying avoid Kendal [to avoid congestion], which they’re planning on doing for the next three or four years, it will absolutely kill Kendal off."

Miss Berry says upstream management should have taken place before a wall was considered.

Alan Jewitt, of Kendal, owns web development business SYPO, which was operating from the ground floor of Sand Aire House during Desmond and was flooded.

Mr Jewitt said: “I think that the current form with concrete walls down the side of the river is really bad news for the centre of the town, which is obviously increasingly reliant on tourism, and that the impression that we get is that it’s being done back-to-front, specifically to do with pressures over getting funding signed off.

"It’s worth questioning whether the amount of money and damage to the appeal of the town centre is justified by the amount of properties that it protects, because I think that’s a relatively small number.”

However, Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron is in favour of flood defence construction getting under way as soon as possible.

"While the Environment Agency’s scheme wouldn’t protect us from a freak 1-in-200-year event like Storm Desmond, it would protect us from the flooding that these homes have experienced every year since," he said.

“Following the devastation that Covid-19 has brought, I could think of nothing worse than watching friends and neighbours be flooded out of their homes because we decided to delay this scheme.”