3. What support is the Welsh Government providing to Natural Resources Wales to alleviate the flooding of land in mid Wales? OQ58916

I thank Russell George for the question, Llywydd. We have provided over £71 million to flood risk management activities across Wales for this financial year. This represents our biggest budget ever. The £39.5 million provided to NRW for flood risk management works includes specific provision for schemes in mid Wales. 

Thank you, First Minister, for your answer. You will know that I've regularly raised issues with you and other Ministers in regard to the flooding of land across mid Wales. You may recall the issue of flooding of homes in Llandinam I raised with you last February, and indeed other areas. Of course, there is great anxiety and worry, as you will know, for people whose homes have been flooded, but they worry that their homes may be flooded as well. We're currently in a position in mid Wales where rivers are overflowing. Further flooding of low-lying land is expected today as a result of levels in the River Vyrnwy and the River Severn. Currently, there are a number of Met Office warnings in place.

A key lever in terms of preventing and reducing flooding risk is the better management of the Clywedog and Vyrnwy reservoirs. I wonder if you can provide an update, First Minister, in regard to the works that I know you and NRW are involved with, especially in regard to the possibility of enhancing the Clywedog dam to provide greater resilience. It's also been my view, for many years, that the operating rules of both dams need to be explored and looked at to allow for greater capacity of storage in the winter months. I know the counterbalance to that is that those dams need to be kept high in times of drought, but I'm absolutely of the view that those rules are out of date and need to be examined and explored. I wonder if you could update me, First Minister, on the Welsh Government's involvement and discussions in regard to the operating rules of both dams.

And finally, compensation for landowners when landowners' land is flooded, sometimes in a planned way, in order to allow for flooding of homes upstream not to occur. Those particular landowners will be considerably disadvantaged. I wonder what considerations the Welsh Government has given in terms of supporting those particular landowners.

Llywydd, I thank Russell George for the number of important questions that he has raised. He is right to draw attention to the fact that, across Wales today, with the amount of rain that we've had in recent weeks and with the volume of rain that is forecast for today and for Thursday and into the weekend as well, there will be communities anxious about what this will mean for them. There is good advice for individuals available through NRW—its own website and other sources of information. Russell George has, as he said, Llywydd, regularly raised issues of concern in communities in his own constituency. He will know that there was a recent public meeting in Llandinam, and I know that he himself has been involved in further discussions with NRW on measures that could be put in place in that village. Purely by chance, Llywydd, I was travelling from south to north Wales at the start of last week and stopped off in Llandinam, partly to have a look at some of the things we had talked about here. It's very easy to see for yourself, if you're there, how close the River Severn comes to the village and the flat nature of the agricultural land that separates the river from people's homes.

The point the Member makes about the Vyrnwy and the Clywedog reservoirs is a really important one, because some people's concern, further downstream, is that water released from the reservoirs adds to the risk of flooding, particularly at points of high rainfall. The Environment Agency is responsible for managing the releases and the water levels in those reservoirs, and it has been releasing water out of both reservoirs at the start of this year. We have an assurance that they will be stepping back from that in the light of the weather forecast this week. But officials of the Welsh Government do remain in regular discussions with the Environment Agency about the operating arrangements it has for both reservoirs, and I'm very happy to make sure that the points made by the Member this afternoon are taken up further in those discussions. 

I think it might be worth, First Minister, encouraging people to look at the map of flood and coastal capital investment that is available online. You have already mentioned that there has been Welsh Government investment of £71 million for this financial year. I understand that an interactive map providing more detail on these schemes will soon be published. I'd welcome, if you're able to provide it, any update on that, because it would be very useful, particularly for owners and residents of the additional 45,000 properties that the Welsh Government has committed to protecting over this coming term. 

I thank Joyce Watson for that important point, Llywydd. We are committed, alongside our partners, to making more information available to residents in Wales so that, if people are anxious about the state of the rivers or the risk of flooding, they know where to go to get that information. Lots of it, inevitably, these days, Llywydd, is online information and we know that that is not equally available to everybody. It's why the consultation that we're involved in currently is important, to make sure that information is available in a way that is accessible to all. The eight properties that were flooded in Llandinam, in Russell George's constituency, all turned out to be occupied by people who were quite late on in life and where access to online forms of warning and information probably weren't the best way of reaching them. So, the consultation, which will be live on 23 January, is a way in which we will be able to make sure not simply that the new forms of information to which Joyce Watson has drawn attention can be put in place but that we make sure that there are ways of reaching others for whom more conventional ways of receiving information might be necessary.