FCERM National Strategy 

Examples  of what will be different for RMAs when working with partners, include: (extract from the FCERM Strategy Executive Summary

Climate resilient places

• Deliver practical and innovative actions that help to bolster resilience to flood and coastal change in local places (Climate resilient places).
• Make greater use of nature-based solutions that take a catchment led approach to managing the flow of water to improve resilience to both floods and droughts.

Growth and infrastructure

• Put greater focus on providing timely and quality planning advice that helps avoid inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding and coastal change.
• Mainstream property flood resilience measures and to ‘build back better’ after flooding to reduce damages and enable faster recovery for local communities.

A nation ready to respond and adapt

• Ensure people and businesses receive the support they need from all those involved in recovery so they can get back to normal quicker after flooding.
• Develop the skills and capabilities needed to better support communities to adapt to future flooding and coastal change.

Partnership funding

In April 2020 the government announced changes to its partnership funding policy, including creating a new risk category. This is enabling more schemes that prevent surface water flooding to qualify for funding.

Asset management and record keeping

The Environment Agency has worked with the assets forum to develop guidance and best practice for local flood risk management. This includes information on effective record keeping. The aim is to agree and publish the first 5 asset types across coastal, river and surface water flood risk. The Environment Agency will also update any additional requirements not already covered by the existing standards published on the Environment Agency’s Data Requirements Library Asset Categories.

This work will be expanded to capture all asset types, their inspection and monitoring, increasing transparency and raising awareness. This will better align surface water asset approaches to those applied to river asset.

EA responsibilities

The Environment Agency has:

• Reviewed its ‘Owning a watercourse guidance’, which sets out owners’  responsibilities, rules and the permissions they need before undertaking work, to  determine if it is an effective product to engage with riparian owners.
• Created a new product which can be used by all risk management authorities to better explain, in an engaging and accessible way, the roles and responsibilities associated with riparian ownership.

 This will be locally tailored to direct people to relevant local risk management authorities.

Skills and capabilities

We are working together to encourage the development of the engagement skills and capabilities needed to better support communities to manage and adapt to future surface water flooding risk. In particular, the Environment Agency:

• Is committed to working with partners to develop a 5-year plan to create new training materials to support risk management authorities.
• In partnership with the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport, will complete a survey of risk management authorities’ engagement skills and capabilities.

This activity will provide good evidence to inform and prioritise the support needed to strengthen skills and capabilities.