Hotel to install £350,000 flood defences
The Trout hotel in Cockermouth, West Cumbria, is to install flood defences worth up to £350,000 after twice being flooded in six years.
Most recently, the hotel was forced to close for eight months following the floods of December 2015 and had to undergo substantial repairs.
Now Allerdale council has approved the scheme, which will see the defences installed throughout the Crown Street building.
The hotel will shoulder the costs of the installation itself, with the help of a small government grant. Managing director Sue Eccles said that the business was currently unable to get flood protection under its insurance and hoped that the new measures would allow that to change, although there were no guarantees.
The flood defence measures, designed and made by Yorkshire firm Aquabeck, will provide temporary protection to existing door and window openings and can be clipped into the frames when the building is at risk.
Eccles said they would be used to protect critical areas of the hotel such as the kitchen, lounge, restaurant and reception areas. There will also be one-way drain valves installed, as well as underfloor vents and a sump pump to remove water.
"At the moment we are only sure of the floods - we can't get flood protection at all. Even after installing all the flood defences there is still no guarantee we will get cover but it might help, so we now have to try and protect the business ourselves," Eccles said.
The defences will be installed in stages, starting with those on external gates on the bottom car park of the hotel, followed by defences on the windows of the hotel itself. If the flood waters were to reach the main car park of the hotel again then the business will be closed down and all of the internal defences will be installed to section off the building, with the whole process taking up to a day to complete.
Eccles said that the hotel will have flood practice drills twice a year.
"The main aim is to try and protect the critical areas - the kitchen, the lounge bar, the restaurant and the reception. What we want is to be able to continue to operate if it floods again," she added.
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