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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department is taking steps to (a) promote and (b) fund nature-based solutions to reduce flooding risks along rivers.

Defra’s Environmental Land Management schemes will provide payments for managing land and water in a way that reduces flood risk. For example, the Sustainable Farming Incentive standards include actions to support waterbody buffering and soil health on farm woodland and hedgerows. Countryside Stewardship currently provides payments for actions that slow down surface runoff and also mitigate flooding from rivers, and we have recently announced a significant expansion of the flood and drought resilience offer within Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier. One of the 2 themes for first wave of Landscape Recovery pilot projects was “Restoring England’s streams and rivers: improving water quality, biodiversity and adapting to climate change.” Many of the actions undertaken to restore England’s streams and rivers will provide flood risk mitigation benefits as well.

Tree planting along rivers can help slow water flow and temporarily store water as part of natural flood management. The England Woodland Creation Offer provides financial support for tree planting and incentivises woodland creation that reduces flood risk through supplementary payments.

In addition, the floods investment programme delivers a range of schemes, including natural flood management. The Government inherited an outdated funding formula for allocating money to proposed flood defences. Established in 2011, the existing formula slows down the delivery of new flood schemes through a complex application process, and neglects more innovative approaches to flood management such as natural flood management. A consultation will be launched in the coming months which will include a review of the existing formula.