Flood Control: Grants

(asked on 26th January 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what grants are available to people to carry out work in their homes to protect them from flooding; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 1st February 2021

Flooding has a devastating impact on communities, businesses and individuals, both in terms of physical damage and impacts on health, including mental health. The government closely monitors the impact on affected areas. With localised flooding incidents, local authorities are expected to have well established contingency arrangements in place and to be able to respond and support their local communities from within existing budgets.

Property measures that resist flood water, such as floor doors, which can reduce both the probability and damage from flooding, are eligible for Defra flood risk grant in aid. This eligibility is restricted to those properties that are at a very significant risk of flooding and that will move to a lower risk band as a result of the intervention. The Government has today published a Call for Evidence to explore potential changes for the future of the flood defence programme focusing on how we can strengthen our assessment of local circumstances. This includes looking at changes to how our flood defence investment programme can further benefit frequently flooded communities, and also exploring ways to increase the uptake of Property Flood Resilience measures

Local Councils also have discretionary powers to fund grants, loans or other payments for home improvements. This can include funding for Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures. When opportunities for renewal, replacement or refurbishment arise for a property at flood risk; owners should consider integrating PFR measures that increase the 'flood recoverability' of the building. Following severe weather with significant impacts across multiple local authorities, the Government is able to deploy the Flood Recovery Framework.

During the unprecedented flooding in November 2019 and the storms which followed in winter 2019/2020, government announced PFR repair grants of up to £5,000 to help eligible properties affected by floods (homes, charities and businesses) become more flood resilient. The repair grants apply to those affected in district or unitary authorities that have 25 or more severely flooded properties.

The PFR repair grants are administered by eligible local authorities, with Defra reimbursing local authorities for grants paid for eligible properties. The most recent figures show that 47 district or unitary councils with over 7000 properties are eligible in England for the November 2019 and February 2020 PFR repair schemes. This includes 235 in the county of Gloucestershire, with 156 of these in Tewkesbury.

Local authorities on the November scheme now have until 31 December 2021 to recover their costs whilst local authorities on the February scheme have until 1 July 2022.

Reticulating Splines