Environment Agency helps fit flood resilience measures to 100 East Midlands homes in £1.6m project

The Environment Agency has helped install property flood resilience measures in 100 homes across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire under a £1.6m project for which homeowners could apply for grants after Storm Babet in October 2023 and Storm Henk in January 2024.

The agency said the measures installed include flood resilient doors and barriers, self-closing air bricks, underfloor sump pumps and self-closing non-return valves on pipework and toilets.

The properties are in Bradwell and Denby Bottles in Derbyshire; Girton, Collingham and Pleasley in Nottinghamshire; and Redmile, Braunstone and Sileby in Leicestershire.

Jon Atkey, the Environment Agency's flood and coastal risk advisor for the East Midlands, said: "From the outset of this project we wanted to increase the resilience of the residents living in flood-hit communities."

Alongside the physical works, the agency said the project set up flood groups with flood wardens in place and helped residents understand their own flood risk and draw up personal flood plans.

The funding

The Environment Agency said several funding streams contributed to the £1.6m cost, including local authorities, the Trent Regional Flood and Coastal Committee (RFCC) and the government's Frequently Flooded Allowance. Homeowners were able to apply for grants after the two storms. The agency did not say how much each stream contributed or which councils took part.

The Trent RFCC covers about 6.9 million people, including the cities of Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, according to the Environment Agency. The committee also runs an innovation fund that invites bids of up to £30,000 of Local Levy for projects meeting its innovation criteria.

The Frequently Flooded Allowance was announced in July 2022 as a ring-fenced £100m fund for communities that flood repeatedly. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it targets communities where 10 or more properties have flooded twice or more in the last 10 years, and at the time expected around 80 schemes to receive support over four years.

Council-administered storm grants

Separately, Nottinghamshire County Council administered applications for a government-announced Storm Babet and Storm Henk property flood resilience repair grant, which offered up to £5,000 including VAT per affected property, of which £800 was a contribution towards a survey. According to the council, the scheme applied only to properties flooded between 19 and 25 October 2023 during Storm Babet and between 2 and 12 January 2024 during Storm Henk, and is now closed to new applicants. The Environment Agency's announcement does not say whether this grant formed part of the £1.6m project.

National picture

The announcement came in the same week as the Environment Agency's Flood Action Week, which began on 12 October, and the launch on the same day of Flood Action Online, which the government describes as a one stop shop for flood advice. The site points homeowners to practical changes such as property flood resilience measures.

Defra and the Environment Agency said the government is investing £4.2bn between what they described as "last April" and March 2029 to repair and replace existing defences and build new ones. They said almost 62,000 properties were better protected in the first two years of the programme, beating an original target of 52,000, and a new target has been set for 200,000 properties to benefit, with an estimated £27.9bn of avoided damage.

The share of flood assets at or above their required condition rose to 93% at the end of March 2026, the government said. For the coming winter the Environment Agency maintains 260 mobile pumps, including 17 ultra-high-volume pumps, and 25km of temporary barriers, and runs a 24/7 flood emergency response with 600 people on call at any one time.

Defra said at least £10.5bn has been committed to flood defences between 2024 and 2036, with £1.4bn being spent on building and repairing defences in 2026/27.

Taskforce

A new Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce met for the first time on Wednesday 14 October, bringing together representatives from more than 50 organisations including the Environment Agency and the Met Office, Defra said.

The department said this year brought the third drought in five years and the driest July in almost two centuries. The Environment Agency said the country is now preparing for a wetter winter after a wet winter and the summer drought.

Floods and Drought Minister Emma Hardy said: "We're facing extreme weather, with flood and drought intertwined, but the government is taking decisive action."

The Environment Agency said the East Midlands project forms part of its wider commitment to strengthening flood resilience across the region, and is urging people to check their flood risk, draft a flood plan and sign up for flood warnings during Flood Action Week.