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 adequacy of flood defences in inner cities.

The Government’s new six-year flood defence programme will invest £5.2 billion in flood and coastal erosion risk management schemes between now and 2027, and will better protect 336,000 properties from flooding and coastal erosion. This will benefit urban areas as well as coastal and rural communities. Climate change projections are built into the design of new flood defences to make sure they are fit for the future and offer the appropriate level of protection to communities.

Surface water is one of the sources of flooding in urban areas and the Government is taking action to tackle this risk which is increasing due to climate change and population growth. The Government published a surface water management action plan in 2018 with 22 actions and we will soon publish an update on this work.

We have already changed our flood defence partnership funding rules to enable more surface water schemes and launched a £200 million innovation fund which includes actions to support surface water flood risk actions. We are putting water company Drainage and Wastewater Plans on a statutory footing through the Environment Bill, to ensure drainage and sewerage systems are resilient to withstand the current and future pressures on them. Lead Local Flood Authorities (county and unitary authorities) have the leadership role on surface water flood risk management.