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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to plan for a potential increase in flooding across the UK.

The Government published a flood and coastal erosion risk management policy statement in July 2020, setting out the long-term ambition to create a nation more resilient to flood and coastal erosion risk. The Environment Agency (EA) also published the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Strategy for England in July 2020.

In June 2022 the EA published the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy Roadmap to 2026, outlining the practical actions the EA and other organisations will take to implement the FCERM Strategy by 2026.

The EA continues to build and repair flood and coastal defences to make the nation more resilient to flooding, delivering on the Government’s record £5.2 billion investment in flood and coastal risk management announced in March 2020. This has already resulted in more than 35,000 properties being better protected from flooding and coastal erosion since April 2021. A list of capital schemes protecting properties, completed between April 2021 and March 2022 is available on data.gov.uk .