Flood grants for 485 properties across county

Flooding minister Rebecca Pow told Shrewsbury and Atcham MP Daniel Kawczynski that grants of up to £5,000 would be made available to the owners of properties affected by flooding in November 2019 and February last year.

But Miss Pow said this year's floods had not so far been severe enough to qualify for support.

Mr Kawczynski had written to Environment Secretary George Eustice to see what steps were being taken to support people who had been affected flooding.

Miss Pow told Mr Kawczynski that local authorities were expected to have well established contingency arrangements in place and to be able to respond and support their local communities from within existing budgets.

She said following severe floods in 2019 and 2020, the Government had set up a scheme where householders, businesses and charities could be eligible for grants of up to £5,000 to fund improvement works to tackle problems with flooding.

Miss Pow said the grants would be administered by local authorities, with central government reimbursing the cost.

But she said flooding which affected the area last month in the wake of Storm Christoph had not met the threshold for further payments.

"The decision to trigger financial support from Government is taken collectively by ministers in the event of a severe weather events with significant wide area impacts," said Miss Pow.

She added that severity, duration and extent of the flooding were all taken into account.

"The reported impacts from Storm Christoph up until now have been lower than would justify activation of the flood recovery framework of support schemes," said Miss Pow

"We continue to monitor the impact on affected areas and will assess whether further support is needed."

Miss Pow said the Government had doubled the amount it invested in the flood and coastal defence programme in England to £5.2 billion over six years.

"This will better protect a further 336,000 properties including homes and non-residential properties such as schools and hospitals," she said.