Recommendation 33

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted in Part

The Government is committed to natural flood management. As with all flood and coastal erosion risk management measures, this is subject to robust analysis and modelling to ensure that the right measures are in the right places. To support this, the Government Policy Statement made a commitment to doubling the number of Government funded projects which include nature-based solutions for flooding and coastal erosion; and made enabling more resilient places through a catchment-based approach a key focus. There are a wide range of delivery mechanisms for natural flood management. Government examples include its £5.2 billion investment programme, £200 million Flood and Coast Resilience Innovation Programme, and £640 million Nature for Climate Fund. In 2017 the Government announced a £15 million natural flood management programme to further develop the evidence base around working with natural process to reduce flood risk. This programme supported 25 large catchment scale projects and 33 smaller community projects and is now coming to an end. The evaluation is underway and will influence future policy and delivery. We are working with stakeholders to determine the specific land management actions that will be paid for under our new schemes that reward farmers and land managers for producing public goods. The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 202431 sets out examples of the types of actions that we envisage paying for under the schemes, including natural flood management. We have also recently published more details on the first phase of piloting the Sustainable Farming Incentive, including the actions we will pay farmers to take to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable 31 https://www.gov.uk/Government/publications/agricultural-transition-plan-2021-to-2024. way. Local Nature Recovery will pay for actions that support local nature recovery and deliver local environmental priorities, making sure the right things are delivered in the right places. Landscape Recovery will support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, land use change projects, including projects to restore wilder landscapes in places where that is appropriate, large-scale tree planting and peatland restoration projects. All three schemes will contribute to natural flood management. Farmers and land managers are key to developing natural flood management schemes. We are launching the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Local Nature Recovery scheme pilot from the end of this year and in 2022 respectively. The pilots will build on the work of our ongoing tests and trials, which involve around 3,000 farmers and land managers across England. Tests and trials focus on potential individual parts of the future schemes, whereas piloting will test pilot versions of the schemes from start to finish. Engaging with people Conclusion and Recommendation 34 & 35: We have listened with great concern to evidence that local communities feel disengaged and ignored in decisions relevant to flood risk. It is clear that, where risk management authorities do engage with local people, this engagement is often not perceived as meaningful or impactful. Communities must not be treated as groups who have things done to them, but as vital delivery partners in the Government’s approach to building resilience. While involving people in decisions that affect their lives is an end in itself, we have also been impressed by the evidence from Flood Action Groups about the positive practical benefits that meaningful engagement with local people can bring. In pursuing its ambition for flood resilience, the Government must ensure that the benefits of meaningful engagement are maximised. The Government should work with the voluntary sector to develop guidance for all risk management and planning authorities on how to meaningfully engage with local people.