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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing levels of funding to help (a) support residents who experienced flooding during Storm Babet in 2023 and (b) mitigate against the risk of flooding in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich constituency.

Following Storm Babet, the Flood Recovery Framework was activated by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Alongside this, the Property Flood Resilience Grant Scheme was activated by Defra.

A post activation review of the Flood Recovery Framework is underway and we expect this to report later this year.

Protecting communities from flooding is a key priority for this Government. The Government is determined to turbocharge the delivery and repair of flood defences, improve drainage systems and develop natural flood management schemes. We are investing over £1.25 billion this year to scale up national resilience through building new and improving existing flood defences. In the current floods investment programme, there are over 150 property flood resilience schemes planned, which will better protect over 4,000 homes.

The Government is reviewing the investment programme to get it back on track after the pace slowed due to the impacts of inflation and delays with the supply chain. Decisions on future spending will be made at the spending review later this month.