Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall am 10:48 am ar 17 Ebrill 2024.
I thank my hon. Friend for consistently raising that point and others with me in my role as Minister. I assure him that all measures and schemes will be reviewed. Having requested a visit from me to come and see some of his businesses in Stapleford, I look forward to coming very soon to address the flooding issues that he and his constituents have experienced.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow is aware, Shropshire County Council, which includes his Ludlow constituency, is eligible to receive funding following Storms Babet and Henk. The Government have recently opened the farming recovery fund, currently in nine areas, to support farmers who have suffered uninsurable damage to their land as a result of Storm Henk. Farmers will be able to receive grants of up to £25,000 towards reinstatement costs for farmland adversely affected by exceptional flooding. I fully recognise right hon. and hon. Members’ concerns about the announcement that the Department made last week. I assure all Members, and indeed those outside this place, that Ministers are actively reviewing the Department’s announcement last week.
My right hon. Friend also voiced some important questions about the schemes. He rightly raised the concern that holding the eligibility count at the lead local flood authority level, which is unitary or upper-tier councils, poses a problem for some local authorities, and that the threshold of 50 internally flooded properties as an eligibility criterion could be considered unfair to smaller local flood authority areas. I assure right hon. and hon. Members that that will be reviewed.
Let me address the concerns raised by the shadow Minister, Emma Hardy that the threshold was actually increased. Following flooding in 2020, and on the back of representations from local authorities, the flood eligibility criterion was reviewed. Previously, the eligibility criterion set by DLUHC for the flood recovery framework to be activated was 25 internally flooded residential units over a district local authority area. Following feedback, that was reviewed and reduced to a threshold of 50 properties, whether commercial or otherwise—not just residential properties—over a unitary authority area, which is a bigger geographical area. The threshold was therefore reduced, not increased, as the hon. Member wrongly claimed.