Flood Damage

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 25 January 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:36, 25 January 2022

I thank Darren Millar for that question, Llywydd. He raises a number of important issues. He's right, of course—Conwy County Borough Council is the flood risk management authority for those stretches of the coast, Kinmel Bay to Llanddulas, and the other stretches that he mentioned. As I said in my answer to Llyr Gruffydd, one of the reasons we have increased the revenue side of our budget is to allow local authorities to have some more capacity to develop the schemes that they then put forward for funding. There are 10 coastal risk management programme schemes across north Wales, and the money is set aside—£190 million, I believe, in total—to allow all those schemes to go ahead.

There's an issue that the Member raises that I think is quite a tricky one. The money that is put aside for the coastal risk management programme has to focus on protecting communities and businesses, and so on, from floods—coastal flooding. And it's not primarily there, therefore, to increase the attractiveness of areas, or to attract tourism, but, of course, those are really important considerations when these schemes are being designed. Now, there are tensions, therefore, sometimes in bringing different funding streams together, to make sure that, when work is being carried out, it does the main thing—protecting communities from flood and coastal flooding risks. But the considerations that Darren Millar raises about how those works then impact upon the attractiveness of an area and contribute to its economy more widely are important ones. And I'll make sure that that point is relayed to the people who are responsible for overseeing the programmes.