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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of Environment Agency management of property level resilience measures to prevent flooding; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of transferring responsibility for property level resilience to local authorities.

In 2020, the industry-led Property Flood Resilience (PFR) Roundtable launched a PFR code of practice that sets out how PFR schemes should be scoped and delivered. This targets property level resilience measures. The Environment Agency is funding training for several partners, including local authorities, to strengthen consistency and confidence in delivering PFR schemes. A national procurement framework for PFR already exists and is used by the Environment Agency and local authorities. The Environment Agency is currently updating the framework to embed the Code of Practice.

Local Authorities have a significant role in developing and implementing PFR schemes. As risk management authorities, local authorities can submit applications to secure contributions from flood defence grant-in-aid or local levy for PFR schemes. Between 2015 and 2021, 80 property flood resilience schemes increased protection for 1,700 homes. 85% of these were not led by the Environment Agency (they were mostly led by local authorities). In the 2021 to 2027 programme there are over 150 property flood resilience schemes in the pipeline, to better protect over 4,000 homes. Approximately half will not be led by the Environment Agency.

In February this year, the Government launched a call for evidence on local factors in managing flood and coastal erosion risk and property flood resilience. We also published a consultation on improvements to the Flood Re scheme to help increase PFR uptake. These included questions to inform the future development of PFR policy. Both have now closed and we expect to publish shortly a summary of the responses we received.

Defra is funding regional pathfinders led by groups of local authorities in the South West (Torbay, Devon and Cornwall), Yorkshire, and the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, to explore how best to drive uptake of PFR. The Yorkshire pathfinder is led by the City of York Council. The Government is also working to develop mechanisms that will improve the quality of work and training for PFR.