Internal Drainage Boards: Finance
(asked on 26th November 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding his Department planned to provide to drainage boards [for the 2024-25 financial year] on (a) 1 July 2024 and (b) 20 November 2024.
Answered by
Emma Hardy
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Internal drainage boards (IDBs) are independent statutory public bodies that are locally funded. As a matter of course they are not funded by the Government but can apply for government grants to deliver specific outcomes. For example, funding under the government’s flood investment programme to deliver flood risk defences.
Defra is providing a one-off £75 million IDB Fund, to accelerate IDBs’ recovery from the winter 2023-24 storms and to provide opportunities to modernise and upgrade assets. This funding will support greater resilience for farmers and rural communities in the long term.
Under the previous Government, Defra planned to provide all the IDB Fund grants in 2024-25 and the IDBs would have to deliver their projects by 31 March 2025. The Government took the decision to extend the IDB Fund into 2025-26.