Evaluation of Property Flood Resilience grant scheme

This project provides an evaluation of the Property Flood Resilience repair grant scheme and makes recommendation for improvement.

From:
Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
Published
21 September 2023
Category:
Increasing resilience to flooding
Topics:
Resilience planning
Project status:
Completed
Project code:
FD2727
Date of start:
1 September 2021
Date of completion:
31 August 2022

Documents

The final report can be downloaded for free from Defra Science Search.

Details

The Property Flood Resilience (PFR) repair grant scheme operates as an add on to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) core Government Flood Recovery Framework. It may be activated following severe weather events that impact multiple local authorities (LAs). The funding is devolved from Defra to LAs if over 25 properties have been severely affected. 

Aims

This evaluation aimed to address two key research questions: 

  1. how effective were processes employed for delivering the government’s PFR repair schemes in 2019 and 2020, such as administration by councils, cost of the process, skills, evaluation, timing, and alignment with insurance claims? 

  2. what is the impact of the scheme in council areas that have received PFR grants (in 2013/14 or 2015/16) and have since flooded? 

Method

The evaluation included an evidence review, interviews of LA’s, focus groups and a survey.

Conclusion

The evaluation found that the PFR grant scheme has improved uptake of PFR measures in the areas where households are eligible for the grants. This has increased protection from flooding in terms of severity of flooding, damage, displacement, and loss.

A series of 22 recommendations were made to further improve:

  • the effectiveness of the process of delivery of the PFR grant scheme

  • the impacts of the PFR grant scheme

This project started in 2021 and was completed in 2022 at a cost of £114,420.

Published 21 September 2023