Government funding to improve flood resilience

Flooding in Rochdale

Communities in Heywood and central Rochdale will receive central government funding to help improve their resilience to flood risk.

Defra have committed £250,000 to help better protect homes and businesses from the risk of flooding through ensuring local communities are more aware of their flood risk, better organised and supported to help manage their own risks and those within their neighbourhood.

Heywood and East Central Rochdale have experienced disruptive flood events historically and current data from the Environment Agency identifies many parts of these communities as ‘at risk’ from flooding from rivers and surface water. The number of properties which are categorised as at ‘significant’ risk includes 100 in Heywood and 80 in East Central Rochdale.

As the Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA) the Council will work with the National Flood Forum (NFF) and other partners including the Environment Agency (EA) and United Utilities to help communities to develop their own local flood risk plans, helping to support and deliver better protection against flooding from local watercourses and surface water.

The council will support local community groups to help them organise themselves into a local Community Flood Resilience Action Group.

Local flood plans produced by the community will also help to inform future capital investment in flood risk management.

Having developed local flood plans for Heywood and East Central Rochdale, the process will be further rolled out as a means by which other communities at risk in the borough can be more engaged with managing local flood risk and future investment in it.

The project is funded by the Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder scheme which is investing £5 million in innovative flood defence projects nationwide.

Announcing the funding, Environment Minister, Richard Benyon said: “We want to help local communities do more to protect their homes and possessions from the risk of flooding. The Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Scheme will enable communities to find simple, effective ways to minimise their flood risk, improve their levels of preparedness, and build confidence and increased peace of mind.

“All together with money from local communities and business raised through our successful partnership funding scheme, over £2.3 billion is being spent to protect people from flooding. This is more money than ever before, and we are on course to better protect 165,000 homes by 2015.”