Flooding (Hansard, 24 October 2001)

§ Mr. Laurence Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what plans she has to provide further assistance to protect existing homes from flooding; and if she will make a statement. [9012]

§ Mr. Morley
[holding answer 19 October 2001]: I plan to reduce the risk of flooding by investing in effective flood warning arrangements and in flood defences in the highest risk areas. Funding for the Department's programme is increasing from £66 million in 2000–01 to £114 million in 2003–04. Further increases are planned in funding delivered through local authorities.

§ Miss McIntosh
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will take steps to ensure that the shortfall in North Yorkshire's flood defence levy for the period 2002–03 is made up to at least the amount allocated for 2001–02. [8143]

§ Mr. Morley
The Environment Agency's flood defence programme is funded mainly by levies paid by county councils, metropolitan boroughs and unitary authorities. These levies, and other flood defence expenditure, are taken into account in determining each council's flood defence standard spending assessment (SSA) for the following year.
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North Yorkshire county council's flood defence SSA for 2001–02 was £2,423,000; the council paid a levy to the Environment Agency of £2,469,192 and I understand that they have no other flood defence expenditure. However, this has to be seen against an historic failure of some local authorities, including those in Yorkshire, to invest adequate sums to maintain and renew defences over many years.
The Government can compensate authorities collectively for expenditure up to the aggregate 4.2 per cent. increase provided for in Spending Review 2000 but to do otherwise would mean unfairly limiting the increase in other parts of the Environment, Cultural and Protective Services SSA block. Of course a local authority is able to utilise the funds provided for those services it judges a priority.
The Government have recently made additional funds available to the Environment Agency to meet flood defence expenditure in the current year. Alongside funds made available during the previous year, Government have now met almost all the emergency response and repair costs that the Agency incurred in the autumn/winter 2000 floods. In addition for both years it has met the design and feasibility costs of river flood defence schemes in order to accelerate their implementation. This represents a substantial contribution to the exceptional costs arising from those floods and the Yorkshire region is a major beneficiary. These additional funds have the effect of reducing the levy increase necessary to deliver the appropriate flood defence service in the region; we now expect the local authorities to make a proportionate contribution.