FINANCE

Budget 2020: Flood-hit areas to share £200m defence fund

The money will go to 25 areas based on criteria including repeated flooding.

Flood-hit areas will vie for £200m in funding to improve flood defences, the chancellor has announced in his Budget.

A £200m ‘place-based resilience programme' has been announced that will go to 25 areas around the country, chosen based on criteria including ‘repeated significant flooding in the past'.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that overall investment in flood defences in England will total £5.2bn over the next six years, doubling spending and reducing national flood risk by up to 11% by protecting 336,000 homes and non-residential properties.

The figure includes an ‘immediate' injection of £120m to the Environment Agency to repair storm damage over the winter months.

Devolved administrations will also receive extra funding based on the Barnett formula.

Research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, Jack Hunter, said: ‘Today's announcement on doubling investment in flood defences over the next six years to £5.2bn is welcome but much more is needed.

‘The funding announced today is still less than the £1bn a year that the Environment Agency says it needs.'

There were no announcements around reform of the Bellwin scheme to fund recovery, criticised as ‘limited and bureaucratic' by the Local Government Association last month.

Small grant schemes of up to £5,000 for individual homes and businesses following November's flooding also caused controversy after the Government limited funding to local authorities where more than 25 properties had been flooded.

FINANCE

The Government is getting it

By Zoe Billingham | 24 June 2025

All in all, the Government is getting it, says Zoë Billingham. ‘Improving living standards in every corner of the country takes some substantial and sustaine...

FINANCE

A capital alliance going beyond the surface

By Cllr Kieron Williams | 22 June 2025

Reducing the risk of disruption across London from surface water flooding is something which must be done across borough boundaries, says Cllr Kieron Williams.

FINANCE

Spending Review 2025: Key takeaways for the sector

By Megan Tam | 13 June 2025

While local authorities have performed better in this Spending Review than expected, proposals to reform public service funding remain uncertain, say Tiffany...

FINANCE

Spending Review: The implications for economic development and growth

By Nigel Wilcock | 12 June 2025

The importance of economic development within the Spending Review to managing the delivery of programmes continues to show why the profession will need to be...

Martin Ford

Popular articles by Martin Ford