Fire and Rescue Services: Floods

(asked on 19th December 2019) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect of recent trends in funding from the public purse of the Fire Brigade on their ability to deal adequately with incidents of flooding.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 7th January 2020

Fire and Rescue Authorities already have the necessary funding to respond to incidents, including flooding. This has been demonstrated through the fantastic response of Fire and Rescue Services to a range of incidents in 2019 including the Wainfleet and Yorkshire floods and the Toddbrook Reservoir incident.

Overall Fire and Rescue Authorities will receive around £2.3 billion in 2019/20.

Single purpose Fire and Rescue Authorities will see an increase in core spending power of 2.3% in cash terms in 2019/20, and an overall increase of 0.3% from 2015/16 to 2019/20.

Additionally, the Home Office also provides funding for High-Volume Pumps and training for their use as part of the New Dimensions Grant to Fire and Rescue Authorities. Including other National Resilience capabilities this totals approximately £18m.

The Home Office also provides a further £9m funding to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, the Lead Authority for National Resilience, in support of the maintenance and assurance of National Resilience Capabilities, including High Volume Pumps.

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