Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether his Department has plans to allocate additional funding from the public purse for the development of an assistance scheme to support people affected by recent flooding events.
The Government provided communities and business grants, business rate relief and council tax discount recovery payments to help support the recovery of local areas in the face of the impacts of unprecedented rainfall as a result of Storm Desmond and Eva in 2015, but this was an exceptional case.
The Government has so far awarded £45.848 million of Communities and Business Recovery Scheme funding to local authorities affected by flooding as a result of Storms Desmond and Eva. To date, those authorities have awarded grants totalling £56,270,271 to eligible households and businesses. The Government will reimburse the difference in due course.
For events of the scale as seen recently, local areas are expected to provide support form within their own resources. The Government therefore has no plans to activate a wider cross government recovery programme.