Today, the North West Regional Flood and Coastal Committee (RFCC) formally launches its new Business Plan for 2022 to 2025.
The Business Plan translates the National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for the North West, incorporating regional priorities, and sets out the role the RFCC will play in enabling and supporting its implementation.
The Plan includes a programme of 16 initial actions which the RFCC has prioritised. The actions cover the full spectrum of the RFCC’s role in achieving flood resilience and achieving wider benefits wherever possible, reflected in the five ambitions.
The RFCC Chair, Adrian Lythgo, said that “The RFCC business plan communicates regional priorities for flood resilience, set against the background of national policy and strategy and includes local actions that will underpin delivery of the national FCERM investment programme.”
The actions are substantial and ambitious and may continue well into the three-year period. The RFCC will seek to progress other actions in years 2 and 3 subject to opportunity and capacity.
The RFCC has agreed to provide up to £1.5 million per year (up to 2025) of its own Local Levy funding to create the additional capacity required and to invest in innovative and novel approaches and tools.
The Plan recognises the vital need for the RFCC and its flood risk management authority partners to work more collaboratively with a wider range of partners and communities to develop and achieve shared objectives.
The plan and its actions have been developed through an extensive engagement process involving two series of workshops with the sub-regional strategic flood risk partnerships and selected partners. It has also been informed by responses to a community survey carried out earlier in 2021.
The Business Plan had an interim release in November 2021 with proposed actions (appendices) still in draft, subject to a more detailed action planning process. The RFCC has now completed that process and has agreed the priority actions which will form the initial work programme from 2022/23. Further scoping and planning of the actions will continue which could lead to some evolution of the actions – at this stage the plan sets out the RFCC’s initial intentions.
The RFCC welcomes feedback from any potential partners or interested parties.
The Business Plan can be downloaded from The Flood Hub.
