Flooding
Debate between Rebecca Pow and George Freeman(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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George Freeman
In Norfolk certainly, the internal drainage boards are the most expert bodies at handling drainage. Could I make the gentle suggestion that we pay for them through some of the Environment Agency’s substantial funding, rather than through council surcharges, which are very stretched?
Rebecca Pow
The drainage boards play a very important role in all of this. They play an important role in many cases, including the provision of nature-based solutions and regulating water levels, as was touched on earlier.
We have allocated a whole raft of funds to help. We announced the frequently flooded allowance, which I really pushed as the floods Minister. That has enabled a whole range of projects that previously did not qualify for floods funding to get off the ground. Because of that fund, we have finally seen spades in the ground in Toronto Close—in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who sent me a picture just yesterday—and a whole range of other colleagues have got projects off the ground.
We have got our natural flood management programme running, because that is another way of managing the water, as well as the £200 million coastal innovation fund. We also have specific pathway projects, one of which is working in the Severn area, to look at more adaptive ways of coping with flooding in the future, which touch on many areas mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury.
I hope everyone is aware that we have listened to the issues relating to flooded farmland; we have had comments about Yorkshire in particular. On 4 January, new actions were introduced under the environmental land management scheme, particularly with regard to grassland management and arable land management for flood resilience, as well as water storage on farms—with decent payments. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury to have a look at that, because we have been listening to our farmers.
We have also listened regarding the issue of sustainable urban drainage, which has been one of my pet subjects since I have been in Parliament. Getting that switched on is in our plan for water, and we are working with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to speed up and switch on schedule 3; again, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury touched on that, and it is so important for regulating water in our housing developments.