Key messages for flood and water management from the Budget

By Innes Thomson BSc CEng FICE, Chief Executive, ADA

After a historic Budget for a number of reasons, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has helped set out some clear directions of travel for spending by this Government and its departments. Whilst asking all departments to find 2% efficiency savings, we now know that Defra’s total allocation will slightly increase from £7.3 billion in 2024-25 to £7.5 billion in 2025-26.

For the time being, we know that Defra’s intention is to invest £2.4 billion over the next two years is to improve flood resilience, by maintaining, repairing and building flood defences, but we don’t know the detail yet of the breakdown between capital and revenue allocations. Work will be undertaken by the Environment Agency to feed the necessary detail into the Chancellor’s multi-year Spending Review which is set to conclude in Spring 2025.

Defra have said that they will be prioritising investment in repairing and restoring critical assets, including investing £36 million into maintaining key strategic assets in 2024-25 and then £72 million in 2025-26.

Positive reference has been made to the National Audit Office’s recognition that increasing investment in operating and maintaining existing flood defences was critical to reducing the frequency of flooding and reducing the impact of flooding. It is appreciated that the Flood Resilience Taskforce, which ADA is a member of, will play a key role in considering the longer term, financially sustainable, solution to managing risks in an increasingly changeable climate.

A welcome announcement to the farming community will also be the pledge to immediately pay out £60 million through the Farming Recovery Fund to support farmers affected by unprecedented extreme wet weather last winter.

The above details are indeed generally encouraging for all affected communities and water level & flood risk management, but it will take some time to work up the details, including if and how internal drainage boards (IDBs) might be further supported with flood recovery and asset improvement in the aftermath of last winter’s storms.

---