GovWire

Flood and coastal resilience innovation fund

In the 2020 Budget, the government announced a 200 million innovation fund to help meet the aims set out in the:

• Governments policy statement on flooding and coastal erosion
• Environment Agencys National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England

Between 2021 and 2027, the flood and coastal resilience innovation fund, managed by the Environment Agency, will allocate:

• 150 million to the flood and coastal resilience innovation programme where 25 local areas will demonstrate how practical innovative actions can work to improve resilience to flooding and coastal erosion
• up to 36m to the coastal transition accelerator programme which has commenced with projects in East Riding of Yorkshire, North Norfolk and may include other locations in the future, to explore and support communities and businesses to adapt to a changing coast
• 8 million to the adaptation pathways programme for work on long term planning for climate adaptation in the Thames and Humber estuaries, the Severn Valley and Yorkshire

The remaining funds will be used to support the projects and the evaluation of the programmes.

Flood and coastal resilience innovation programme

The flood and coastal resilience innovation programme has allocated 150 million to 25 local areas.

For some, a local area might be a county, city, town or village. For others, an area could mean a river catchment, an estuary or part of the coast. On average each area will receive 6 million between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2027.

With this funding, projects will demonstrate how practical innovative actions can work to improve resilience to flooding and coastal erosion. These resilience actions can be individual or a combination of actions. Resilience actions might include:

• nature based solutions
• sustainable drainage systems
• approaches for making existing properties more flood resilient
• encouraging local businesses to improve their flood resilience
• building community and voluntary sector capacity to respond and recover

Programme aims

The aims of the flood and coastal resilience innovation programme are to:

• encourage local authorities, businesses and communities to test and demonstrate innovative practical resilience actions in their areas
• improve the resilience of 25 local areas, reducing the costs of future damage and disruption from flooding and coastal erosion
• improve evidence on the costs and benefits of the innovative resilience actions and demonstrate how different actions work together across geographical areas
• use the evidence and learning developed to inform future approaches to, and investments in, flood and coastal erosion risk management

Principles of the programme

This programme will fund 25 areas to develop innovative practical actions that improve resilience to flooding and coastal change. This includes the ability to adapt to future climate change.

These resilience actions will go beyond those funded through the governments main flood and coastal erosion grant in aid programme.

Each area will implement and evaluate resilience actions selected from the list of eligible resilience actions. Proposed resilience actions must meet all the following 5 principles.

Principle 1: achieve practical changes which increase resilience within the project area by reducing the likelihood or consequences of flooding or coastal erosion.

Principle 2: provide public benefits.

Principle 3: be consistent with existing flood and coastal erosion plans, for example:

• local flood risk management strategies
• flood risk management plans
• catchment flood management plans
• shoreline management plans

Principle 4: demonstrate added value for example, they must:

• go beyond other local resilience work programmes and other funding mechanisms
• work with actions funded by other routes

Principle 5: demonstrate innovation. See types of innovation,

Types of innovation

The areas will deliver innovation in the following ways.

Combinations of actions that maximise overall resilience

This includes a combination of different resilience actions working together to improve resilience to flooding and coastal change. Specifically, we want to understand how actions complement one another, and add more value compared to individual actions.

Broadening the range of resilience actions

The projects will:

• fill gaps in our evidence on the costs and benefits of particular types of resilience actions
• seek to roll out resilience actions that have only been trialled in a limited number of places or circumstances
• trial new flood and coastal resilience activities

Increasing uptake and achieving resilience actions

This includes:

• new approaches to achieve a resilience action, for example, using new partnerships, or different ways of working or funding projects to achieve the outcomes
• actions which seek to overcome existing blockers or barriers

We want to build on (and not duplicate) existing evidence and previous work.

The 25 areas

The Environment Agency received 79 eligible expressions of interest (EOI) by the deadline of 29 January 2021.

An assessment panel of experts independently reviewed the EOI. The experts were from a range of partner organisations and technical specialists from Defra and the Environment Agencys national teams.

For the latest news, please visit the Environment Agencys flood and coastal resilience innovation programme engagement website.

Coastal transition accelerator programme

As part of the Governments 200 million innovation fund, 36 million will be invested to adapt to the effects of climate change on the coast.

Known as the coastal transition accelerator programme (CTAP), the initial areas of focus will be East Riding of Yorkshire and North Norfolk. Both local authorities will receive funding to help communities on the coast that cannot sustainab

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