The 2020 Floods

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:19 pm on 16 June 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:19, 16 June 2021

As I said, I've just outlined a series of additional funding that we've put into NRW. That funding is, of course, across Wales, and not for any specific community. We also work very closely with our local authority partners in ensuring that they do the right assessments and we have the right kind of flood management projects coming forward for capital funding. Local authorities themselves have a range of projects in this regard, and we work very closely with them and NRW to ensure that we have a holistic programme right across Wales.

Back in March, a £65.415 million programme of flood risk management activities across Wales was announced for this financial year we're currently in. That includes £36 million capital spend on new projects and maintenance of existing assets. As I've already said, it's our biggest capital budget ever.

The capital budget this year includes £4 million for post-storm repairs, following the flooding in December 2020 and January 2021, and to date, £1.9 million of that has been already allocated for the purpose. So, we have a number of—. So, we have—I'm sorry, I can't do the maths off the top of my head—around £2 million left to allocate, which we will be working with local authorities across Wales, to make sure that we have the right schemes in place. But I can assure the Member that we work very closely with our local authority partners to make sure that we have the best protection available and to understand what their capital and revenue requirements for flood prevention schemes look like, and to make sure that we also have maintenance programmes in place for existing flood protection assets.