Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to protect Castlefields in Shrewsbury constituency from flooding.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Environment Agency is working with key partners, including Shropshire Council, to address flooding in areas of Shrewsbury. The River Severn Partnership, jointly chaired by the Environment Agency and Shropshire Council, is taking a holistic approach to the management of water across the Severn catchment. This work includes looking at areas upstream of Shrewsbury, through the Severn Valley Water Management Scheme, where changes to land use practices may provide benefit to areas downstream, such as Castlefields.
Several pilot projects are already well underway. The Environment Agency takes an agile approach, considering the potential for projects to reduce flood risk to people and property locally within its capital programme. Such projects will always follow partnership funding rules to ensure the benefits outweigh the costs. In 2021 Government committed to invest £5.2billion across the country to address flood and coastal erosion risk.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to (a) reduce development on floodplains and (b) help people who live in at risk areas adapt to flooding.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government's National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is clear that inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding should be avoided by directing development away from areas at highest risk, including floodplains. Where development needs to be in locations where there is a risk of flooding as alternative sites are not available, local planning authorities and developers should ensure development is appropriately flood resilient and resistant, safe for its users for the development's lifetime, and will not increase flood risk overall. In 2020/21, 97% of all planning applications were in line with Environment Agency advice on flood risk. In July 2021, the Government published a review of policy for development in areas at flood risk. The review found that there are robust measures in place to protect people and property from flooding and identified opportunities to further strengthen the system.
However, the Government is taking forward new actions in response to these findings. In July 2021 the Government made changes to strengthen environmental protections in the NPPF including some aspects of planning policy concerning flood risk. In August 2022, the Government published significantly updated planning guidance on flood risk and coastal change to help councils take climate change into consideration and make more informed decisions on whether a new development should go ahead. The Government is committed to creating a nation that is more resilient to future flood and coastal erosion risk. This includes supporting actions which can better prepare people and communities against risk, for example by issuing flood warnings, designing and adapting properties and infrastructure so there is less damage and disruption, and creating the right conditions to enable affordable insurance to help with recovery. The Government's £200 million Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Fund is supporting local authorities, businesses and communities to test and demonstrate innovative practical resilience actions in their area. The wide range of innovative projects includes apps alerting residents to flooding, actions to improve drainage and schemes to protect vital sand dune beaches. Other elements of the programme include the Coastal Transitional Accelerator Programme and the four adaptive pathways to support work in the Thames and Humber estuaries, the Severn Valley and Yorkshire to trial and develop ways of planning ahead and making wise investment choices for the decades to come in face of the long-term uncertainties brought by climate change.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to protect (a) towns and (b) villages from future flooding events.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Government announced in March 2020 that the amount invested in flood and coastal erosion schemes would be doubled in England to £5.2 billion between 2021 and 2027, providing around 2,000 flood defences to better protect communities across England. Every English region is forecast to receive more investment in flood and coastal defences in this programme compared to the previous 2015 to 2021 investment programme. The previous programme invested £2.6 billion in more than 850 flood defence projects, better protecting 314,000 homes and thousands of businesses.
In July 2022, government announced the creation of a new Frequently Flooded Allowance to support communities that have experienced repeated flooding. The ring-fenced £100 million allowance, which is part of the £5.2 billion investment, seeks to address some of the specific challenges faced by frequently flooded communities, particularly those that are smaller and more dispersed and therefore struggle to secure the funding they need to improve their resilience to flooding.
We are also providing additional funding of £200 million over six years to help over 25 local areas to take forward wider innovative actions that improve their resilience to flooding and coastal erosion, and we are investing an additional £170 million to accelerate the building of 23 flood schemes across the country.
Flood infrastructure is eligible for funding from the government's Levelling Up Round 2 Fund, Shared Prosperity Fund and Rural England Prosperity Fund, where that infrastructure meets the wider objectives of the Fund. These Funds can be used to support local partners to meet their flood and coastal erosion risk management commitments.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions she has had with the Environment Agency on its plans to meet Shropshire Council representatives to discuss the proposed Shrewsbury North West Relief Road.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The Environment Agency, as a statutory consultee, has been involved in conversations with Shropshire Council and its representatives for at least three years. The Environment Agency has also engaged comprehensively through its pre-application service to advise on the appropriate level of environmental assessment required to help enable the Council to make an informed decision. It has offered detailed advice on several critical matters that could affect both the project and the town of Shrewsbury. These include protection of the water resource aquifer used by Severn Trent Water to provide water supply, potential flood risk impact and storage compensation, and potential impact on existing biodiversity (including recommendations for net gain to be included). This engagement is ongoing as confirmed in the recent conversations between the hon. Member, Shropshire Council officials and Environment Agency staff.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to develop a (a) strategy for and (b) cost-benefit analysis of the delivery of badger vaccinations funded by his Department.
Answered by Scott Mann
Controlling bovine TB in wildlife, specifically badgers, makes up part of the package of measures of our bovine TB eradication strategy, with the aim of achieving Officially TB Free status for England by 2038[1].
HM Government policy has enabled farmers and landowners to apply for licences to cull or to vaccinate badgers. However, to date badger vaccination has been across small, spatially fragmented areas. To help support a transition toward widespread badger vaccination and build industry confidence in it as an investable and effective disease management approach, HM Government is undertaking a number of initiatives in order to encourage badger vaccination uptake:
All these initiatives are designed to help, facilitate, and encourage more farmers, landowners, and independent groups to get involved and deploy badger vaccination schemes. A system to evaluate the effectiveness of badger vaccination, which would include a cost-benefit analysis, is under development.
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Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is planning to take steps to deliver a strategy to eradicate Bovine TB from wildlife, including providing data on (a) epidemiologically-led culling and (b) Government-funded badger vaccination.
Answered by Scott Mann
Controlling bovine TB in wildlife, specifically badgers, makes up part of the package of measures of our bovine TB eradication strategy, with the aim of achieving Officially TB Free status for England by 2038[1].
As part of the next phase of the strategy HM Government will now evolve its approach and gradually move on from intensive badger culling over the next few years. Badger culling would remain an option where epidemiological assessment indicates that it is needed. The proposal for epidemiologically led culling is currently under development.
Details of HM Government funded badger vaccination, together with data on the number of badgers vaccinated, is published on GOV.UK[2][3][4][5].
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Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he and his Department is taking steps to deliver a strategy for the reduction of Bovine TB in wildlife, including publishing details on (a) epidemiologically-led culling and (b) Government-funded badger vaccination.
Answered by Scott Mann
Controlling bovine TB in wildlife, specifically badgers, makes up part of the package of measures of our bovine TB eradication strategy, with the aim of achieving Officially TB Free status for England by 2038[1].
As part of the next phase of the strategy HM Government will now evolve its approach and gradually move on from intensive badger culling over the next few years. Badger culling would remain an option where epidemiological assessment indicates that it is needed. The proposal for epidemiologically led culling is currently under development.
Details of HM Government funded badger vaccination, together with data on the number of badgers vaccinated, is published on GOV.UK[2][3][4][5].
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Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
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 has plans for the installation of flood barriers in Shrewsbury.
Answered by Steve Double
Significant investment in flood mitigation has taken place in Shrewsbury. The Environment Agency is looking at further options for those areas of Shrewsbury still impacted by flooding. These may include flood barriers or built solutions but could also be other forms of protection like Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures or nature-based solutions. Efforts are currently focused on schemes to protect those communities in Shrewsbury with the highest impact from flooding and those closest to achieving the full amounts of funding required.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether officials in his Department have plans to hold meetings in the near future with the leadership of the River Severn Partnership on the prevention of flooding in Shrewsbury.
Answered by Steve Double
The former floods Minister Rebecca Pow met with the hon. Member and Professor Mark Barrow (Chair of the River Severn Partnership) on 23 May to discuss the steps to prevent flooding in Shrewsbury and managing the River Severn. Officials and the Environment Agency are continuing to follow up on the discussions from the meeting in May.