Westminster Hall Debate, Flood Recovery Framework, 16 April 2024

The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales.

Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils. Our ultimate ambition is to support councils to deliver local solutions to national problems.

There have been 10 named storms in the winter of 2023/2024. Government in England activated the flood recovery framework after storm Babet in 2023 and storm Henk in 2024. Emergency funding through the Bellwin scheme has not been activated this winter, so any requests for financial support would need to be made by individual councils to government. We hope that government will keep this under review.

Lead Local Flood Authorities (County or Unitary level council) must have 50 or more properties affected by internal flooding to qualify for the Storm Henk emergency funding.

Councils have raised concerns about the 50 property threshold, and how this is calculated. It needs to take into account all data sources, including local data from councils on homes flooded by surface water.

Flooding is a result of natural features in the landscape (e.g the catchment area of a river) rather than local authority boundaries. The threshold of 50 properties has excluded councils where areas of flooded homes are split across council boundaries.

The scale of flooding is a challenge with some councils dealing with property resilience grant applications from hundreds of property owners. The government’s cut-off date for grant payments is mid-2025, and councils are concerned about the capacity of the industry to install property resilience measures within the funding window, and the availability of qualified surveyors. Greater flexibility on the deadline for claims would be helpful, to avoid the risk that councils will have to step in and fund the cost for householders who could not claim within the specified period.

Councils appreciate the emergency financial assistance through the Bellwin scheme to affected areas to help tackle the immediate aftermath, but it is limited and bureaucratic. From past events we heard that councils had not spent enough on clean-up costs to quality for Bellwin funding, and there were gaps on repairs to infrastructure such as roads and bridges that councils had to fund from other budgets. Councils need much longer-term investment to prevent flooding in high risk areas.

Nationally, the successful delivery of flood and coastal erosion risk management and property flood resilience is only going to be successful with increased cooperation and cross border partnership working between different organisations. The EA and water companies need to factor in more frequent and senior engagement with local authorities into their business model immediately. Long term plans should be developed with the Local Authorities both directly impacted and neighbouring and need to be flexible enough to respond to local flooding issues when they occur.

Funding

EA flood defence grant in aid funding (also known as partnership funding) is the main source of capital funding for flood risk/coastal erosion management. This is generally helpful, but the funding formula tends to favour urban over rural areas. Councils report that it is difficult to use grant in aid funding for surface water projects. For example, the cost of putting together the business case and data needed to support a funding application for surface water can cost more than the grant award. EA have made some helpful adjustments to the application process but there is still more that could be done to reduce bureaucracy.

Investment in flooding and coastal erosion relies heavily on public sector contributions. Private sector and community contributors are more likely to come forward if public funding models are fit for purpose and deliver local, place based solutions. We are calling for a more flexible funding model, and for capital and revenue funding to be devolved into a single place-based pot to allow local areas to support a more diverse set of outcomes that meet local priorities, instead of prioritising funding according to nationally set outcome measures.

Capacity of councils

A CIWEM survey found that only a third of risk management authorities (RMAs) have a full complement of staff to deliver surface water management and three quarters of RMAs are struggling to recruit new staff. In light of these resource pressures, we welcome clarification from government on the timetable for the implementation of Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act. This would create a new role of SUDs (sustainable drainage) approval body for local authorities and removes the automatic right to connect surface water runoff to public sewers. We want to work with Defra to ensure that the resource implications for local authorities are fully understood and fully funded.

Further information

The LGA maintains a Severe Weather Hub, this has information for councils on how to respond during extreme conditions. The resource is designed to help local authorities prepare for, and react to, bad weather and ensure effective communication with residents. We need to ensure the resource implications for local authorities are fully understood and fully funded by Government into the future to make this work, and the LGA is keen to work with Defra on this.

Elliot Gregory
Public Affairs and Campaigns Advisor

Phone: 020 7664 3059 

Mobile: 07766252833

Email: [email protected]