National Flood Advisory Service to be established.
A National Flood Advisory Service will be established to improve
Scotland's flood resilience and embed best practice on a
nationwide scale.
The service is one of the actions in Scotland's first National
Flood Resilience Strategy, published today. It will provide
support and advice on building flood resilience to delivery
partners and communities, and provide the governance framework
for progressing high value flood actions such as flood protection
schemes.
Other key actions include:
- work to improve our understanding of how urban and rural
landscapes can be adapted for flood mitigation
- support for a broader range of flood actions including
smaller flood protection schemes and property level flood
resilience
- improvements to how data is used to inform decision making
and raise community awareness of current and future flood
exposure.
The scale of the challenge Scotland faces in response to climate
change means that actions within the strategy are designed to
extend beyond “fixing” individual flooding problems to creating
flood resilient places and communities.
An additional £15 million has been set aside in the draft
2025-2026 Scottish Budget to support the delivery of the
Strategy, wider flooding resilience and coastal adaptation work.
Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy said:
“Floods like we saw in October 2023 during Storm Babet show that
global warming is already influencing weather events in Scotland.
Over the coming decades, we will see greater economic, social and
environmental impacts as sea levels rise, and rainfall
intensities and river flows increase because of climate change.
By 2080, it is estimated that the number of properties at risk of
flooding in Scotland could rise from 284,000 to almost 400,000.
“Our National Flood Resilience Strategy therefore puts
communities at its heart – with a focus on building community
flood resilience and reducing the impacts of flooding on people,
businesses, and housing.
“It supports an increase in the range and rate of delivery of
actions both to manage our flood exposure, and to reduce the
impacts of flooding when it does occur.
“This builds on work already under way to create more flood
resilient places. In addition to the £42 million we provide
annually to local authorities for flood resilience, we have
committed an additional £150 million over the course of this
Parliament to deliver improved flood resilience and we propose to
commit a further £15 million as part of our draft Budget for
2025-26.”
The Strategy will be delivered via an implementation plan that
will take forward policy development for six priority action
areas, starting with the establishment of the Flood Advisory
Service.
Background
- The National Flood
Resilience Strategy builds on existing Scottish Government
support for flood resilience and strong partnership working
including working with, amongst others, SEPA, local
authorities, Scottish Water and NatureScot.
- The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) also
publishes its Potentially Vulnerable
Area (PVA) consultation digest today
- Since 2008, the Scottish Government has made available £42
million per year to local authorities to invest in flood risk
management actions – a commitment that is in place until
2026.
- The 2020 Programme for Government committed an additional
£150 million over the course of this Parliament for flood risk
management actions.
- The Strategy is part of The Scottish National
Adaptation Plan 2024-2029
- More information on the National Flood Advisory Service will
be made available in due course
