3. What discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs regarding access to emergency financial support for residents affected by recent flooding? OAQ55202

Homes affected during recent storms will receive up to £1,000 from Welsh Government. We are asking those impacted to contact their local authority emergency support teams in the first instance, to ensure they can access support as quickly as possible.

Thank you. As I've mentioned here numerous times, storm Ciara very sadly hit my constituency on 9 February 2020. Now an emergency funding relief scheme was announced on 18 February, and the First Minister stated, 

'We will make urgent financial support available to people whose homes have been flooded and, in particular, help families who do not have insurance cover'. 

Now, four weeks later, I am still being contacted by a number of my constituents who have filled in the appropriate forms and not heard a thing, and in a month, that's not good. So they've not received a penny. Now, on Sunday Politics, I was really heartened to hear you say that all those affected have now received their £500. Well, as I mentioned, I've got a number that haven't, so what I thought I might do, outside the Chamber, is write to you directly with details of those, so that maybe—. But are you aware of a problem in the processing of these application forms? And I have raised it with the local authority, who say, 'Well, we've done our part.' They've filled the forms in, we've sent them off, but there is this quite long delay, and I also have one lady who's not been offered the £500. She's been offered £80 but has suffered thousands of pounds' worth of damage, so I'm a bit worried about the criteria. Will you look into the processes? Because all I'm asking for is some fairness and balance for my constituents, so that they have something to help them get back on their feet after this awful flooding on 9 February.

I share any concern that people are waiting too long to receive their funding. Most applications to the discretionary assistance fund are processed within 24 hours, so individuals should have the funding within their bank accounts very quickly indeed.

I know that, as of 4 March, there were 278 awards made at £500, and 266 awards made at £1,000, so representing over a total of £405,000. So, I know that DAF is looking at verifying independent claims using data provided by local authorities, so what the individuals really need is for those local authorities to verify and to vouch for the fact that those individual homes have been affected by flooding, and that should be enough for the discretionary assistance fund. So, in the first instance, it would be about the local authority just confirming to DAF that those households have been affected, and then that should make things move more quickly. But of course, I'm keen to provide assistance if I can.

I was encouraged by the response of the First Minister yesterday, who indicated a willingness to consider adopting a scheme similar to the property resilience scheme that operates in England. This allows flood-hit homes and businesses to apply for up to £5,000 to help protect against future flooding. Yet, an answer that I had from the environment Minister this morning says that those households would not be getting a similar scheme in Wales.

I also asked the environment Minister a couple of weeks ago about help for homes and businesses with the cost of energy—dehumidifiers and industrial heaters, essential equipment when drying out a flood-hit property, are really expensive to run. She said that she would look at it, and I quote,

'as part of our ongoing response'.

Can you please let me know what discussions have taken place with regard to providing financial assistance, both for household flood-resilience measures, and for help with energy costs above and beyond what has already been announced to flood-hit homes and businesses? You will be aware, Minister, that there is a great amount of need out there, so can you tell us what additional resources you are making available to meet this need?

Well, I've had discussions with the UK Government about flooding, so you won't see announcements particularly related to Wales in the budget for flooding today. What you will see is an announcement of £120 million for repairs and £200 million directly to local communities for flood resilience. Now, we don't understand yet what the consequential funding might be that flows from that, but we've been really clear that our first and most important thought was dealing with the immediate crisis, and then there will of course be an ongoing piece of work in terms of ensuring community resilience in the future.

I'm hoping that there will be additional funding on top of what's announced in the budget today coming to Wales. That's certainly the discussion that we've been able to have with UK Government, and they've recognised that the situation here in Wales was exceptional, although I was disappointed not to hear Wales mentioned amongst the list of affected places in the Chancellor's statement today.

But these might be issues that the Minister for environment will prioritise in terms of the future, but we haven't yet got to the point where we're setting out the longer term stuff, so these will be discussions that I've yet to have, although the Minister might well be having those discussions with her officials.

Trefnydd, I wonder whether you could update us as to what the situation is with regard to the funding of major infrastructure problems. I know there has been an issue raised by the UK Government in terms of sending details and so on, but, of course, much of the infrastructure damage, some of it's below water, some of it isn't accessible and so on, but certainly Rhondda Cynon Taf is actually putting a lot of its reserves into actually carrying out that work, and, obviously, the Welsh Government is giving support as well. But, the key thing has to be that the money that we were told at UK Government level would be passported to Wales is actually quite vital now, in terms of the commitment that whatever the level of infrastructure damage is, we know that those major structure problems will have that additional financial resource from the UK Government. Have there been any further discussions? Has there been any indication that there will be a guarantee that the funds we need will be forthcoming when we need them in order to carry out those infrastructure reconstructions and repairs?

Well, the Prime Minister committed that funding would be passported to Wales to help us deal with the flooding, and we absolutely will hold him to that. Mick Antoniw is completely right to say that we don't yet know the scale of the challenge ahead of us, in terms of the recovery, because so much of that structural surveying work has yet to be done. Many of the areas that need to be surveyed are inaccessible at the moment. So, there's a lot of work to be done in terms of assessing and coming to an understanding of what the future figure might be.

We've let the UK Government know that we're probably talking about hundreds of millions, rather than tens of millions. I know I've heard figures around £180 million, but local authorities are all the time gathering further understanding. So, I think it will be several months before we can understand the full impact, in terms of spend for recovery, but we will be, certainly, holding the Prime Minister to account for his promise.