How to complete a Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management appraisal

This guidance explains how to complete an appraisal for a Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management strategy or project in England. It also explains how to create a business case to support an application for FCERM funding in line with government policy.

  • 1. Introduction

    This section describes what appraisal is, what the FCERM appraisal guidance is for, who should use it and how its structured.

  • 2. The FCERM appraisal guidance, supplementary guidance and related links

    This section describes the 2 versions of the appraisal guidance and how to decide which one you should use. It also lists the supplementary guidance you should use to help you with specific parts of your appraisal projects.

  • 3. About the FCERM appraisal

    This section describes the policy context for FCERM appraisal and the roles and responsibilities of organisations doing an appraisal.

  • 4. Choose an appraisal type and start your project

    This section describes how to make an initial choice of appraisal type and start your project. Using the right appraisal type will help you achieve what is needed in the most efficient way.

  • 5. Understand and define the appraisal need

    This section describes how to understand and define the need for an appraisal to develop successful FCERM appraisal solutions.

  • 6. Set the appraisal objectives and critical success factors

    This section describes how to set your appraisal objectives. It explains what you, local partners and stakeholders want to achieve in managing the problem your project must address. It describes how critical success factors are the basic criteria to meet for a project's success.

  • 7. Identify the type of project and set the project baseline

    This section describes how you can identify the right project type for your project's circumstances. It also describes the different project baselines and which one applies to your chosen type of project.

  • 8. Identify the longlist of options and then reduce options to a shortlist

    This section describes how to develop a longlist of options for your FCERM project. It then explains how to reduce this to a shortlist of options that meet the appraisal need, clearly define the options and consider constraints and opportunities.

  • 9. Describe and estimate costs

    This section explains how to describe and estimate the costs of your appraisal options for use in your economic appraisal and to establish funding requirements.

  • 10. Identify, quantify and value impacts

    This section explains how you can describe, quantify and value all relevant and significant positive and negative impacts over the life of your FCRM options. It also explains how to record and present them in an appraisal summary table.

  • 11. Compare and select the preferred option

    This section explains the decision-making processes you need to use to compare your shortlist of options and decide a preferred option. There are 2 different decision-making processes you need to use depending on your project type.

  • 12. Appraisal reports and other documents

    This section explains how to report the results of your appraisal and identifies the guidance you need to use produce a business case.

  • 13. Monitoring and evaluation

    How to evaluate your appraisal and project implementation and use the results to help future appraisals. Monitoring and evaluation are a part of the responsible and transparent management of public resources for implementing strategic plans and individual projects.