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.

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.