Property Flood Resilience Scheme

(asked on 3rd March 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will extend the Property Flood Resilience Grants Scheme to cover people who have been flooded since December 2020.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 8th March 2021

Flooding has a devastating impact on communities, businesses and individuals. The Government closely monitors the impact on affected areas.

The decision to trigger financial support from central Government is taken collectively by Ministers in the event of severe weather events with significant impacts on a wide area. In reaching a decision, Ministers consider factors such as severity, duration and extent of the impacts.

During unprecedented flooding in the winter of 2019/2020, the Government announced Property Flooding Resilience (PFR) repair grants of up to £5,000 to help eligible properties affected by floods become more flood resilient. The repair grants apply to those affected in district or unitary authorities that have 25 or more severely flooded properties. Currently, 52 district and unitary councils with over 7700 properties are eligible in England for the November 2019 and February 2020 PFR repair schemes.

The reported impacts during events since December 2020 suggest the numbers of internally flooded properties have been lower than would justify activation of the PFR Repair Scheme. With localised flooding incidents, local authorities are expected to have well established contingency arrangements in place and to be able to support their local communities from within existing budgets. Councils have discretionary powers to fund grants or loans for home improvements, this can include funding for PFR measures.

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