Flood Risk and Flood Defence Infrastructure: North-west England

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) on securing this debate on a highly important matter. Flood and coastal erosion risk has increased and is projected to continue to increase as a result of climate change. I hope that that is at the forefront of all the conversations at COP this week.

A priority for this Government is to protect communities around the country from flooding and to improve the resilience of the country. I recognise the challenge that all constituents, including my own, face during extreme weather events. I sympathise about the impact on households and businesses and, of course, on people’s mental health. Now more than ever, it is important to act to improve our country’s resilience to flooding, and that is exactly what this Government are doing.

Before I respond to Members’ remarks, I wish to raise the issue of Storm Claudia, which brought heavy rain and high winds to the UK over the weekend. The worst impacts were felt in south-east Wales. A major incident was declared in Monmouth because of significant flooding in the town and evacuations; The incident was stood down on Sunday, and I met my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) this morning. My sympathies go out to all those affected by the flooding—I personally know the distress and upset that flooding can cause—and my thanks go to the Environment Agency, emergency services, local authorities, other responders who were volunteers and all the people who have worked together to protect and support communities and who continue to do so. As flooding is a devolved policy issue, I have contacted the First Minister of Wales to offer my support, and the Environment Agency has offered support locally, including any mutual aid that may be requested by Natural Resources Wales.

I now turn to the focus of today’s debate. I like the passion that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South brought to this conversation. It shows clearly how much this issue means to her and what an important issue it is to her constituents. I thank her for her continued engagement on the Sankey brook flood risk management scheme, which aims to reduce the flood risk to homes and businesses from Sankey brook, Dallam brook and Longford brook in Warrington.

We aim to announce in March 2026 the further list of schemes that will receive investment during 2026-27, but with further announcements to follow each year subsequently. This announcement will follow the regular statutory yearly process for allocating flood funding, with support from the regional flood and coastal committees across the country. The reason we do it in this way is to give local people some say over the money and the schemes that are happening in their area, so it is really important that the regional flood and coastal committees play their role in looking at how the money is best spent and helping to ensure that it meets local priorities.

In 2026-27, we are prioritising projects that are already in construction—we are basically just getting on with building stuff—so the money will be going into projects that are literally being built. I would say, “Build, baby, build,” but I think someone else may have used that in a different debate. We will be delivering flood projects. This will deliver flood risk reductions as soon as possible and will secure the best value for money for taxpayers by avoiding costs that would be incurred if these projects were delayed. We will just get on with doing it and get on with building them.

The EA remains committed to the long-term goals of Sankey brook flood risk management scheme and will continue to work closely with Warrington borough council and United Utilities on progressing the scheme. There will continue to be close working on that as it goes on, and I will update my hon. Friend with any information that I have.

I was quite excited about one point raised in this debate—I am probably the only Minister to get excited about pre-pipe conversations. We can continue to build defences larger and larger, but as so many hon. Members said during the debate, if we slow the flow, if we deal with what happens to the floodwater elsewhere, we do not need as many concrete defences when we reach the bottom of the hill. What is really interesting about the pre-pipe idea is looking at how we prevent lots of the floodwater from ending up in the combined sewerage system, because when these sewerage systems become overwhelmed, what happens? We have a pollution incident, we have flooding—we have something happening around the country.

The pre-pipe idea is so sensible, but the previous flood funding formula rules inhibited natural flood management and inhibited what we wanted, which was to do things in a more innovative way. Our water White Paper takes the issue of flooding and water more holistically to look at the pre-pipe idea. Basically, where is the floodwater going to go? The floodwater is going to go somewhere when we have a downpour, so where do we want it to go and how do we design it to be in the places where we want it, rather than the places where we do not want it? It is a really interesting idea.

We have also increased the weighting for natural flood management. Under the old scheme, there was a separate fund for natural flood management, but that was because the actual formula did not result in natural flood management outcomes. The reason was that with natural flood management, it is not an engineered solution. We cannot build natural flood management and say, “I guarantee this changes the flood risk bracket—I guarantee this natural flood management scheme will hold this much water,” because by its nature it is a natural flood management scheme. We have changed the rules and the system around them to enable us to have more natural flood management.

The other thing of real interest in how the flood funding formula works is that we have given a deprivation weighting, because we know that areas with higher levels of deprivation are often the last to recover from a flooding incident and find it the most difficult to recover. Adding a weighting for deprivation and an emphasis on natural flood management to the formula that allocates where the money will be spent enables us to have more nature-based solutions and protect those who are most in need and least able to respond to flood events.

The EA budget has increased, not decreased. Under this Labour Government, we increased it by £188 million this year, and our flood budget of £10.5 billion is a record investment—the most money that has ever been spent on flooding. As a Labour Government, we can proudly say that we are putting the most money ever into flooding and giving the Environment Agency the most money it has ever had.

[Oliver Ryan]

It is great to hear about the record funding to tackle flooding. I wonder whether I can copy the words of another Member and invite the Minister to my constituency to see some of the great benefits of that funding increase in Padiham.

[Emma Hardy]

That is very exciting. I was offered beer by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), so perhaps I can come for a visit on the way.

The issue of forecasting was raised. We have improved our flood warning and informing system, with a new system going live on, I think, 21 October. The maps allow people to zoom down for more detailed information. Constant work is going on to make our forecasting more accurate. I encourage all hon. Members to talk to the specialists at the Met Office about how they do this work. It is more art than science, because they have to look at different predictions. If there are heavy downpours concentrated in one area, as we had last year, it becomes difficult to judge exactly, but they are continually working to improve the forecasts. Our flood forecasting in this country is some of the best and most accurate in the world, but there is always more that we can do.

Many hon. Members raised the issue of insurance. We had an insurance roundtable. As I have explained before, the floods resilience taskforce is a huge group of people who meet together, before creating action groups that go away and focus on particular issues. We have just had an action group to look into insurance—who is getting it, who is not getting it, how affordable it is and what information is out there. There is also the flood insurance directory, which I am happy to circulate among Members; it allows people to find something that is affordable. I have been pushing insurance companies to offer the Build Back Better scheme, which gives people an extra £10,000 to make their properties more flood-resilient, to as many as possible. Greater Manchester combined authority is doing great work, taking a combined look at how we tackle flooding: it is one of the best examples of that holistic working around the country. The authority sits on the floods resilience taskforce to offer advice.

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. It was lovely to visit Leigh and Atherton and talk to people there. I have met the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) to discuss watercourse maintenance, and I stand by my promise to visit next year.

On insurance—I apologise if everyone knows this—I want to flag something about how Flood Re works. It puts a levy on everybody else who pays insurance, so every time someone asks that the scheme be increased or widened, or that more people benefit from it, I want to sound a note of caution, because that would result in people who are not at risk paying more for their insurance. That is how it works: it is a levy system. It would be wonderful to have lots more money for everything, but I hope that everyone who is asking me for extra money will support our Budget next week.

Finally, let me thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South for securing this debate on the incredibly important issue of flood risk and defence. We should all encourage our constituents to sign up for flood alerts and warnings, have a flood plan and know what to do if there is a flood emergency. A pack has gone out to every Member of Parliament and was circulated again just last week with a “Dear colleague” letter. Will Members please use that information and share it as much as possible, so we can ensure that everybody is prepared for the winter ahead?

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

I call Sarah Hall to wind up extremely briefly.