Flood Control: Lincolnshire

(asked on 25th October 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential effectiveness of Lincolnshire County Council’s Homeowner Property Flood Resilience assistance scheme trial; and what plans his Department has to introduce similar schemes across the UK.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 28th October 2021

Property level resilience measures can play a key role in reducing flood risk and helping people get back into their homes quicker following a flood. We welcome the initiative shown by Lincolnshire County Council in developing a local Property Flood Resilience (PFR) scheme and are keen to hear about the lessons learned.

On 1 February 2021, the Government published a call for evidence on local factors in managing flood and coastal erosion risk. Part 2 sought evidence about the key PFR enablers to help inform policy development and the action required to drive the uptake of PFR. It looked at a range of enablers including the role of funding and incentives. The Government will publish a roadmap by the end of 2022 setting out how we can further accelerate take-up of property flood resilience measures. This will ensure all relevant bodies are playing their part and that consumers can have assurance about the quality of products and their installation.

The Government invested £2.9 million from the 2018 budget to support regional PFR pathfinder projects in Yorkshire, the South West and Oxford-Cambridge Arc. These projects developed interventions to promote use and understanding of PFR. This scheme has just concluded and is being evaluated.

Our 2015-21 floods capital investment programme provided grant in aid to reduce flood risk to 3,000 homes through PFR measures. The current six-year FCERM programme looks to double the number of homes better protected by PFR.

We are also making changes to the Flood Re scheme, including changes to promote the uptake of PFR by permitting Flood Re to offer additional money above the cost of a claim so properties can be repaired in a more resilient way. The Government aims for the changes to take effect in April 2022, subject to Parliamentary time and final preparations by the industry.

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