A £120M FLOOD relief channel is meandering ever closer to becoming a reality after it was revealed a Network Rail scheme will shave "millions" off the overall cost.

Around £18-20m needs to be found but Environment Agency operations manager Peter Collins said he was "very confident" and expected the cost to further come down once the full designs were put forward.

The four-mile channel between Seacourt Park and Ride and the River Thames at Sandford Lock will divert water to the west of the city to avoid severe flooding to Botley Road and Abingdon Road seen in 2007 and most recently in 2013/14.

The EA expected its strategic business case for the scheme to be signed off by the Treasury soon and said businesses may be called upon for the remainder of the funding.

Mr Collins said: "We are very confident, we managed to secure a big portion early on thanks to Defra and the Local Enterprise Partnership.

"We hope to get some more funding perhaps from those organisations and are looking at whether a large collection of businesses set to benefit from the scheme would provide funding."

In December 2014 David Cameron visit Osney Island as he announced £42m worth of Government funding towards the scheme.

The Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership Growth Fund has contributed £26m, the Thames regional flood and coastal committee £14m and local councils have stumped up £2m - totalling £84m.

Network Rail recently gained planning permission to raise the track at Hinksey and install a culvert – plans which were adapted to allow the flood relief channel to pass through it.

The four-mile channel must cross the railway line at some point and Mr Collins said being part of the rail firm's work would shave "millions" off the scheme in closing the line.

At a recent meeting to discuss a culvert at Hinksey the EA's area flood and coastal risk manager revealed that £18-20m was still required but said the hunt for cash had "progressed well" and construction was still expected to start in 2018.

Mr Collins, who has worked at the EA's Osney depot for twenty years, said the agency's flood defences and instant response would continue to improve and that more needed to be done throughout the city both before and after the channel's completion.

He said: "If we look at climate change and particularly the flooding we recently saw in Cumbria and Yorkshire - flooding will be more intense in the future and we need to be ready for that.

"We want to re-assure people that our instant response, flood modelling and forecasting will help to protect people.

"While the Oxford Flood Alleviation scheme is going on we will be working on improving existing rivers - it will not protect everyone equally and we will always be doing more."