The Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme

Catchment to Coast is one of 25 DEFRA funded Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme (FCRIP) projects seeking to demonstrate how practical innovation actions can improve resilience to flooding and coastal erosion. A £150m funding pot was announced in 2020 as part the governments National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England where local authorities were invited to submit an expression of interest in 2021.
DEFRA Logo

The projects

Projects are seeking to mitigate against current and future flood risks from the sea, rivers, groundwater and surface water whilst providing wider benefits to aspects such as water quality and biodiversity. There is an emphasis on data gathering and learning as part of the programme with outcomes being used to steer local and national policy making decisions surrounding flood risk management into the future. All projects will involve innovation, which includes:

  • Gathering evidence on how combinations of different actions can deliver benefits to place-based resilience
  • Trialling a broader range of resilience actions to improve our understanding and evidence of the costs and benefits of different actions
  • Increasing uptake and find new ways to achieve a resilient action. For example, using new partnerships, or different ways of working or funding projects, or overcoming barriers to achieve the outcomes.

FCRIP projects are testing 10 resilience actions building on existing evidence and previous work and go beyond those funded through the government’s main Flood and Coastal Erosion Grant in Aid Programme.

These actions are:

  1. Integrated water management solutions
  2. Nature based solutions
  3. Property flood resilience
  4. Community infrastructure resilience
  5. Monitoring and management of local assets
  6. Minimise damages and disruption to small and medium sized businesses
  7. Community and voluntary sector action to be better prepared and recover more quickly
  8. Local emergency response equipment
  9. Enhanced flood warning systems
  10. Investigate policy challenge areas:
    1. Balancing agricultural, flood and environmental priorities in low-lying agricultural land.
    2. Meeting the need for major new developments in areas with flood risks
    3. Retrofitting drainage and water management arrangements in urban areas
If you would like to find out more about the other 25 FCRIP projects around the country, you can join Engagement HQ - a hub for the community and partners to get the latest updates on all FCRIP projects.
Go to Engagement HQ