Flood Control: Finance

(asked on 13th March 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, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2024 to Question 15154 Flood Control: Finance, in which local authority areas the completed flood defences are located; what type of flood defences they are; and how many homes are protected by those flood defences in each local authority area.


Answered by
Robbie Moore Portrait
Robbie Moore
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 20th March 2024

We are in the third year of the current six-year £5.2 billion Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) investment programme. This investment programme will better protect hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding and coastal erosion. At the end of March 2023, approximately £1.5 billion of this funding has been invested with 60,000 properties better protected from flooding and coastal erosion. This was delivered through over 200 completed schemes.

Below is a table which shows properties better protected by Local Authority boundary between April 2021 and March 2023. The figures include Environment Agency, Local Authority, and Internal Drainage Board flood and coastal risk management projects that fall within that boundary. We are unable to provide a breakdown of the type of flood defences for each authority. However, the Environment Agency’s Programme of flood and coastal erosion risk management shows completed FCERM schemes within the previous six-year investment programme (2015-2021), and the first year of the current capital investment programme (2021-2027) which are now better protecting homes.

Each year the Environment Agency also produces a summary of flood and coastal erosion risk management work carried out by risk management authorities in England. This is required under Section 18 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. When the current FCERM investment programme ends, after March 2027, the Environment Agency will publish a report with a breakdown of spending, similar to the report published in 2022 after the 2015-2021 investment programme.

Please see the table attached. Notes for the table:

  • The figures are based on the best available information.
  • Flood and coastal schemes built in one Local Authority boundary may benefit under another Local Authority Boundary.
  • Projects that cross multiple boundaries have been grouped together under the ‘cross-boundary projects’ row.
  • The properties were better protected between April 2021 and March 2023. The April 2023 to March 2024 figures have not yet been finalised.
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