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 18 October 2021 to Question 54035 on Environment Protection: Finance, what proportion of the 130 funded projects were nature-based defence projects; and what proportion of the total number of applications received by his Department were nature-based defence projects.

Between 2015 and 2021, government funding enabled the completion of over 700 projects to better protect 300,000 homes from flooding. Of these, 130 projects included nature-based solutions to reduce flood and coastal erosion risk.

The Environment Agency allocate money based on where there is the greatest need for a scheme to help manage flood risk to communities. A variety of solutions from hard defences to more natural measures are assessed once funding has been allocated. Information on the number of ‘applications’ for nature-based defence projects is therefore not available.