More cuts in the flood budget
8 Nov 2010 01:52 PM
The Myth – The Mail on Sunday reported that the flood budget will be cut by more than £700million over the next four years. A letter in Today’s Independent also repeated claims the budget is to be cut by 25% based on what the previous government had planned.
The Truth – The previous plans hadn’t been given the green light by the Treasury. No money had been committed to fund the plans, which means they couldn’t have gone ahead anyway – so to claim the new plans represent a 25% cut is nonsense.
We expect to spend at least £2.1billion on flooding and coastal erosion over the next four years, only a slight decrease on the £2.36billion spent over the last four years, and nowhere near the £700million quoted. We’ve protected the budget as much as possible, meaning 145,000 homes will be better protected from flooding by 2015.
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