PLANS to protect Oxford from flooding for the next 100 years have been presented to the public.

On Saturday, almost 150 people went to the Town Hall to learn more about the Environment Agency’s £100m strategy to divert flood water away from the city.

The agency plans to build a flood relief channel as wide as the River Thames to the west of Oxford.

Other options being considered include building large earth barriers to protect the city or buying more portable equipment, such as a £180,000 defence recently bought for Osney Island.

Brian Hastie, 74, of Abbey Road, Osney, was among those who inspected maps of flood plains and proposed landscape changes at the four-hour exhibition.

He said: “It’s a talking shop at the moment. The question is when it is going to be put into fruition.

“They could go back to the old ways of giving farmers money to dig ditches and that kind of thing. I think that would be a big help.

“This strategy is gravely important — it has got to be done because we can’t stand another 2007.”

The agency’s consultation on flood risk management is the biggest ever undertaken in the city, which suffered severe flooding in July 2007.

More than 3,600 Oxfordshire homes and businesses are deemed at risk of flooding by the agency.

Tim Treacher, 70, from Western Road, Grandpont, said he attended the exhibition in his capacity as chairman of Spragglesea Mead and Dean’s Ham Allotment Association, where 50 plots regularly flood.

He said: “This conveyance channel certainly looks to be a very good solution if it gets the water through the Redbridge gap.”

Agency spokesman Keith Hutchence said: “The potential of a really substantial flood, based on the position of Oxford and the rivers which run through it, is quite great.

“We haven't really had that flood and at some stage it just might just come, which is why it's important to do something about it.

“We have got to come up with a project to make the water go round Oxford, because it's such a big problem having all this water flowing straight through the city centre.”

Further exhibitions will be held at Wolvercote Young People’s Club on Wednesday, and at South Hinksey village hall, on Thursday, both between 3pm and 7.30pm.