Flood Detection and Prevention: Technological Assistance

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of technological assistance for flood detection and prevention.

My Lords, the Environment Agency routinely uses technology to improve flood detection and prevention, including enhanced warning systems, drones, and digital tools to support early detection and preparedness. It is expanding the use of remote sensing and real-time monitoring to assess the condition of flood defence assets, strengthening forecasting and optimising maintenance. In 2025, the agency published a new national flood risk assessment outlining current and future flood and coastal erosion risks across England.

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. The severe flooding that we have experienced again this winter makes it clear that increasingly urgent further action is surely needed to protect homes, businesses and communities. In south Yorkshire, where the River Don has flooded to devastating effect at least three times in the past six years, Rotherham council is trialling CCTV to monitor water levels in high-risk areas. It may not sound very sophisticated, but I gather that the early warning potential is real. What steps are the Minister and his colleagues taking to consult local government to harness the very best practice and deliver the most effective innovations at scale?

I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing the actions of Rotherham council to our attention. He is absolutely right that the whole of south Yorkshire has been subject to severe flooding. As he said, sometimes, as in places such as Rotherham, basic and simple solutions are the best.

To address his wider point, we are working closely with local government to ensure that lessons from recent flooding and innovations that we are seeing across the country can be adapted at scale. The purpose of the Government’s Floods Resilience Taskforce is to improve co-ordination across the whole system and translate local experience into national practice. Recently, the taskforce met in Manchester to consider how case studies from local partners in areas such as Greater Manchester—and from devolved Governments, such as Northern Ireland, in the case of the meeting the other day—including innovation in forecasting, community resilience and emergency response, can be replicated more widely. Local partners are directly engaged through regional flooding coastal committees through local resilience forums, which ensures that local knowledge, such as in Rotherham, as cited by the right reverend Prelate, on innovations to reduce flood risk through natural flood management and sustainable draining systems, informs national decisions on how best to roll out new technologies and share best practice across regions.

Does the Minister agree that some of the most natural, sustainable and environmentally beneficial projects are those such as Slowing the Flow at Pickering, which has prevented Pickering flooding in recent years? Will he use his good offices to ensure that farmers will be reimbursed through environmental land management schemes, and that upland farmers in particular will benefit from flood prevention money as a public good to the community, especially common land graziers and others who farm on common land?

The noble Baroness is right to point to the potential for natural flood management to improve the environment in a holistic way while providing sustainable flood defences. That can be through a variety of approaches, including restoring riverbeds, changing the way in which land is managed, as the noble Baroness says, to absorb more water, or creating salt marshes in coastal areas to absorb wave energy. That is why this Government have pledged to invest at least £300 million in natural flood management over the next 10 years—the highest figure to date for the floods programme—as well as work for other programmes, including environmental land management schemes, to ensure that farmers are properly part of the flood defence picture.

What additional steps are the Government taking to ensure that the benefits of new flood technology reach people in rented, social and low-income housing and are not confined to owner-occupiers who are better able to afford private resilience measures?

It is worth pointing out that a fair amount of work has been done, particularly by the Environment Agency, to improve community outreach and engage with the kinds of households that the noble Baroness describes. For instance, more than 1.5 million users are signed up to receive EA flood warnings in advance of flood incidents. The Environment Agency provides the online “check for flooding” service, which has recorded 2.2 million users and 30 million page views since September 2024. There is some great work going on around education. Together with Microsoft, the EA has worked in partnership to develop three national award-winning Minecraft game suites designed to teach key stage 3 pupils about flood risk.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for clearly illustrating that the Government are already on top of this subject, but want to encourage him a little further along the way. With changing weather patterns that have resulted in persistent rainfall in winter periods over several years, and droughts now characterising our summer period, can he have discussions with his ministerial colleagues in Defra about a technologically innovative solution involving the storage of this water, which would help promote better land use management and food security?

I thank my noble friend for raising that interesting example. I will certainly go back and talk with colleagues about how we make sure that we adapt to changing environmental factors. We say that local flood risk management planning should follow this sort of adaptive approach over time, which takes account of climate change and other needs, such as demographic change and food security, and ensure that climate change protections are built into the design of new flood defences.

My Lords, no matter how good one is at detection and prevention, there will always be floods. That is why it is important to have insurance. The Flood Re scheme, which was generated some years ago and was time-limited, applies only to buildings that were built before 1 January 2009 and only to residential buildings, so anything that has a micro-business in it is not insurable. As so much time has moved on, and as it is important to support micro-businesses in flood-plain areas, does the Minister agree that it is time to look again at Flood Re to see whether the eligibility criteria could be expanded?

I will have to write to the noble Lord with details about our future plans for Flood Re. He is right that it is important that the Environment Agency focuses on outreach, not only to households but to businesses, to help them adapt to changing weather conditions and demographic changes, as well as to new developments which will have an impact on flood risk in their local area.

My Lords, the United Kingdom has developed some excellent technological flood detection and prevention solutions, including FloodAdapt, Nautilus barriers, Floodstop, flood defence and others. The UK Government’s funding strategy of November 2025 promised to use public money to unlock additional contributions from public, private and charitable sources and to encourage joint working. Can the Minister tell us what progress has been made in bringing on board private finance to utilise some of our technological solutions?

The noble Lord is right to quote what we said in our funding strategy from last autumn to assist with flood prevention. To be clear, the new funding policy is designed expressly to unlock additional investment from public, private and charitable sources. The new rules simplify eligibility and prioritisation, so that more projects can attract external contributions. We are expanding opportunities for natural flood management and sustainable drainage systems, in which private and charitable contributions are already established, and the EA is working closely with local partners. However, it would be remiss of me not to mention at this point that, on Tuesday, the Environment Agency announced a record-breaking £10.5 billion for flood defences over the next decade. It is important that we combine that heavy lifting from government investment with investment from other sources.

My Lords, last year, Professor Peter Bonfield undertook an independent review for Defra on how to improve the resilience of people and properties to flooding. Defra produced a report last November, called FloodReady—An Action Plan to Build the Resilience of People and Properties. Has this plan been brought to the attention of citizens who suffer from flooding, as did the citizens of Monmouth last autumn, so that they know how best to cope with and prepare for future floods?

I thank my noble friend for raising that important report—an example of engaging with communities. Apart from building flood defences in the first place, the most important thing we can do is make communities aware of early warnings to ensure that they can cope when floods occur. The Environment Agency is pioneering a number of different projects, such as working with Hello Lamp Post—I am glad I have the opportunity to mention this because I could not quite believe it when I was told about it. That firm has worked with AI to develop Hello EA, which allows people to talk to flood defences using mobile text messages and AI. It helps individuals learn how structures work and how flood risks are managed.