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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a fund which is financed through a charge on the sale or transfer of benefiting properties to support (a) coastal protection and (b) flood prevention.

To speed up the delivery of new defences and ensure that the challenges facing businesses and rural and coastal communities are adequately taken into account, a consultation will be launched in the new year which will include a review of the existing formula for allocating money to proposed flood defences.

We want to ensure that floods funding policy drives close partnership working and brings in wider financial contributions to flood and coastal erosion schemes, to make Government funding go further. We plan to consider this as part of the abovementioned review.