The grassroots football club in North Yorkshire dealing with the impacts of flooding
Andy Charlesworth, chairman of Tadcaster Albion FC, describes the impacts of flooding on his team and the community they live in.
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In this story we speak with Andy Charlesworth, the chairman of Tadcaster Albion FC, a team based in North Yorkshire that competes in the Northern Counties Eastern League. Andy has been chairman of the club for most of the last 8 years and he’s been involved with the club for more than 20 years. We met at the ground, right next to the River Wharfe, to discuss the impact of flooding on the club. The pitch was flooded 6 times last year, and has already been flooded multiple times this year. The town of Tadcaster has been so severely impacted by flooding (in particular in 2015, when the bridge in the town centre collapsed) that last year the Environment Agency put planning permissions in to improve the flood defences outside the ground. They are looking to spend 30 million pounds on Tadcaster as a due to regular floods, but until then The Brewers will have to remain resilient.
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“We still have pay the players … so we need to have the matches on and the clubhouse open to generate income, it’s our only income stream, so it’s really important that we don’t get flooded so that we can manage the business … over the last 10 years or so we’ve spent £150,000 on recovering from floods rather than developing the club”
“We have had it where it trickles and it comes slowly, and then we’ve had other times where it’s more like a wave and it takes all the fence down. The force of the water pushed the fence right down … the water comes behind the goal at the south of the ground and then it just gets quicker and quicker and more and more … it fills from the lower part of the pitch and then it just fills and fills.”
“There was one game where it took us seven goes to get it played”
“We needed to get to the clubhouse, so the fire brigade brought their boat and they escorted us across to put the flood doors on.”
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Stories From Round Our Way. Everyday conversations with people impacted by climate change.