December 23, 2010 12.03 pm This story is over 159 months old

New council grant to prevent flooding

Flooding: The County Council will receive a flooding prevention grant, as well as more duties from the government.

The Lincolnshire County Council will receive a £238,000 grant to protect people from floods, the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced on Thursday.

The funds will fully cover the costs for local authorities of putting into place and carrying out new responsibilities under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

The responsibilities include flood mapping, producing risk management plans and supporting community flood awareness groups.

The £238,600 grant is for the year 2011/12 and the funding will increase to £689,000 in 2012/13.

Lincolnshire County Council is one of nine councils across the East Midlands to receive the funding, part of a £1.4million share of £21million worth of Defra grants.

Out of the nine councils, the Lincolnshire authority received the biggest chunk of the total grants, almost double than any of the other eight councils.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: “This money will go a long way to help local flood authorities identify and deal with the risk of flooding in their own communities.

“Each local authority can decide where the money will be of most use – it could be used to pay members of staff, to come up with plans for dealing with surface water flooding or generally for work with the public on how best to deal with flooding.

Mark Welsh, Area Highways Manager with the County Council said: “Following the 2007 floods, a review was undertaken by Sir Michael Pitt which recognised significant gaps in local flood risk management and administration nationally.

“As a result, the Floods and Water Management Act was passed. This gave significant new duties to authorities to manage local flood risk of surface water flooding, which previously no-one had responsibility for.

“Lincolnshire is recognised as one of the country’s leading authorities in this field and will continue to ensure we excel in this area.”

Source: Defra