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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to improve resilience to flooding in high-risk communities.

This Government is investing at least £10.5 billion until 2036 – the largest flood programme in history – a record investment that’s projected to better protect nearly 900,000 properties. We are already making a difference. We delivered 151 schemes in our first year in Government and £108 million was reprioritised into urgent flood and coastal defence maintenance to halt the decline of flood asset condition following years of under-investment.

Following consultation in October, the Government announced major changes to its flood and coastal erosion funding policy. The new funding policy will optimise funding between building new flood projects and maintaining existing defences and will ensure that deprived communities continue to receive vital investment.

Flood Re is a UK-wide flood re-insurance scheme with the purpose to provide reinsurance in such a way as to promote affordability and availability of insurance for UK households at high flood risk. It also aims to manage, over the period of operation of the scheme, the transition to risk-reflective pricing of flood insurance for household premises.