First communities get flood protection money

Floods minister, Rebecca Pow has named the first 53 communities in England to receive better flood protection under the government’s £100m Frequently Flooded Allowance to fund protection for areas which have been affected by repeated flooding.

These first projects will be allocated more than £26m in total, to shield more than 2,300 households and businesses across the country.

The allowance targets communities where ten or more properties have flooded twice or more in the past ten years. Typically, candidate communities will be small and face barriers to access funding due to the complexity and cost of building flood defences compared to the size of the community.

Executive director for Flood and Coastal Risk Management at the Environment Agency, Caroline Douglass, said: “Projects will improve resilience through a mixture of hard engineering flood defences and natural flood management measures. The allowance also supports the installation of property flood resilience measures such as flood doors and barriers, meaning more homes will be better protected in communities where traditional defence schemes are not always viable.”

The government said the ring-fenced funding is part of a £5.2bn investment in flood defences across England.