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 publish the criteria his Department used to allocate the flooding and coastal erosion funding announced on 14 July 2020.

On 14 July 2020 the Government announced it will invest up to £170 million to bring forward work on flood defence schemes which will drive economic growth and better protect thousands of homes, businesses and jobs from the devastating effects of flooding.

The additional economic recovery funding will enable work to start on 22 new flood defence projects in 2020 or 2021, in addition to those schemes which were already planned to commence in the final year of the current six-year programme to better protect 300,000 homes from flooding.

The schemes identified were shortlisted and approved based on their economic growth/recovery potential, specifically including numbers of businesses and jobs protected. They are also all projects that were “shovel-ready” to begin construction in the financial years 20/21 or 21/22.