Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to allocate additional funding to the River Severn Partnership to support the implementation of short term flood defences to tackle the risk of flooding in winter 2020-21.

In July, the Government announced that up to an additional £170 million will be spent to accelerate work on shovel-ready flood defence schemes that will begin construction in 2020 or 2021. The Government awarded the River Severn Partnership a significant additional investment from this fund which is providing up to £30 million for the Severn Valley, and up to £4.9 million for Tenbury Wells.

In addition, in March the Government announced its national £120 million package to repair flood risk management assets damaged as a result of the winter floods. £4.2 million will be for assets on the Severn corridor, which will cover 18 projects. Repair work to these assets is currently ongoing though, in the meantime, the defences will remain fully operational, including both demountable and temporary defences at a number of locations such as Shrewsbury and Ironbridge.