wrans/answers2025-03-20 conversation_238
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-03-20)

UK Parliament Hansard data: wrans/answers2025-03-20 conversation_238

Helen Morgan:To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Farming Recovery Fund, if he will publish (a) the number of individual payments made by and (b) total costs of those payment to each local authority area for each year since the fund was established. \p Daniel Zeichner: Farming Recovery Fund payments are made directly to farmers. The Farming Recovery Fund is activated by the Government of the day and has been activated in 2015, 2019, 2020 and again in 2024 depending on the scale and impacts of the flooding, these are detailed below:

- In 2015 when Storm Desmond produced 341mm of rainfall at Honister Pass in Cumbria in 24 hours.

- In 2019/2020, a flash flood in North Yorkshire affecting a single parish and the collapse of a flood embankment in Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, and widescale flooding across central and eastern England.

- In 2024 an expanded fund following Storms Babet, Henk and the exceptional wet weather during the six-month period October 2023 to March 2024

Each iteration of the Farming Recovery Fund is different depending on when, where and what the weather conditions were which caused the flooding. Farmers were able to apply for these funds the details of which are set out below.

Region

FRF 2015

FRF 2019

FRF 2020

Number

Amount

Number

Amount

Number

Amount

Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire

1

£9,120.00

Cheshire

1

£3,948.94

Cumbria

530

£4,647,445.22

Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire

18

£78,834.38

4

£28,006.84

East Anglia

1

£1,530.00

East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire

8

£34,027.49

2

£5,515.78

1

£1,361.30

Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bath/Bristol area

1

£2,924.20

1

£21,387.50

35

£241,976.01

Greater Manchester

7

£33,124.52

Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire

6

£52,665.32

70

£362,580.74

Inner London - West

1

£3,603.00

1

£1,730.00

Lancashire

129

£978,167.39

Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire

1

£5,829.50

Lincolnshire

1

£19,846.00

30

£165,887.13

North Yorkshire

212

£1,507,147.20

36

£266,871.18

Northumberland, and Tyne and Wear

60

£425,640.21

Shropshire and Staffordshire

1

£20,000.00

29

£120,655.82

South Yorkshire

1

£514.90

12

£39,280.42

Tees Valley and Durham

15

£106,270.76

West Yorkshire

27

£181,071.49

Total payments to English registered businesses

995

£7,970,432.38

106

£636,271.21

141

£760,259.65

Paid for land in England but business registered in other UK country

4

£31,867.98

3

£7,368.36

Grand total

999

£8,002,300.36

106

£636,271.21

144

£767,628.01

We will publish data for the 2024 Farming Recovery Fund once payments have been finalised. The 2024 Farming Recovery Fund has paid around 12,700 farming businesses £57.5 million, to date.

Recovery payments were always intended as an exceptional intervention. Defra is working with the Flood Resilience Taskforce to develop a longer-term solution to the impacts of our changing climate on the agricultural sector. We are also investing in environmental land management schemes which include actions to improve flood resilience and water management on farms.