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 made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a Natural Flood Management accreditation scheme to set standards for best practice.

In summer 2023, the Environment Agency surveyed Natural Flood Management (NFM) practitioners on their skills and training needs. The survey told us that only 6% of respondents considered accreditation to be “extremely important,” but there was no consensus on where accreditation is required or who is best placed to provide it. The survey data told us there was more demand for NFM training to count towards Continued Professional Development (CPD) credits rather than accreditation. There was no consensus on who is best place to award these CPD credits. The survey concluded that course content and the way courses are delivered are more important to respondents than accreditation or CPD credits.