OXFORD will not get its £100m flood relief channel – protecting thousands of homes – until it gets hit with more floods.

Environment Agency (EA) bosses, who want to build the channel to the west of the city to protect about 2,120 floodplain properties from ‘one-in-75-year’ floods, said the scheme had been postponed as the costs of flood damage to Oxford’s rail and road network were lower than previously estimated.

Although Oxford has been hit by floods three times in the past nine years, the region’s flood project manager Geoff Bell said the scheme was unlikely to start unless the flood risk to the city increased.

However, he insisted the EA would push ahead with delivering short-term flood relief projects instead to avert damage caused by one-in-five- and one-in-20-year floods in Oxford.

Mr Bell said: “The channel isn’t abandoned – it is still part of the long-term strategy.

“We can’t go ahead from enhanced maintenance (of rivers and streams) to the channel until such time as the flood risk increases a little.

“We’re disappointed with this and we know the people of Oxford will be.

“When news is disappointing we can either sit and wring our hands or get on and see what else we can do.”

Plans for the Oxford channel are believed to come up short when they are judged for funding against criteria drawn up by the Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, he said.

It had been hoped that work on the proposed two-mile channel west of Oxford could start by 2015.

Mr Bell said if the flooding risk did increase, work could still not now start until 2019.

Dr Peter Rawcliffe, a spokesman for the Oxford Flood Alliance, said the residents group would now be urging the EA to spend about £15m on short-term flood alleviation over the next three years.

He said: “If circumstances change and flooding gets worse, the big scheme will be brought back.

“My personal view is that it is pretty much a dead duck now and in my lifetime won’t happen, but I’m prepared to put it aside.

“Three floods in nine years is quite enough and we want to get on with other things now rather than sitting back for five years and hoping the big scheme might come along one day and rescue us.”

The EA’s first programme of short-term measures in the Oxford area, worth £1.8m, was completed last month, with the installation of large culverts on the Hinksey Drain at Redbridge.

It is now planning a second programme of short-term measures focussed on the area around Redbridge to start next autumn and is hoping to complete its Oxford Flood Risk Management Strategy by next summer.

This will identify the most effective way of managing flood risk in Oxford over the next 100 years, but Mr Bell could not give details.