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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to support communities affected by recent flooding in Leicester; and whether he plans to make a flood recovery grant available to local authorities.

Protecting communities around the country from flooding is one of the Secretary of State’s five core priorities. This Government will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience by maintaining, repairing and building flood defences.

During recent flooding, the Environment Agency has been operating flood assets and working with local partners across England to prevent and reduce the severity of the flooding.

In Leicester, the Environment Agency will continue to deploy officers to affected communities to assess the impacts of flooding to properties and businesses. It will also continue to work with the local resilience forum to identify further opportunities to reduce flood risk in Leicestershire and support the resilience of communities to flooding.

There are no plans to activate Defra's Property Flood Resilience grant scheme as the current scale of flooding has not met the threshold for its activation. Local Authorities should have contingencies in place for flooding and be able to provide support through their normal mechanisms.