More than £860m will be spent in 2021-22 alone boosting design and construction of more than 1,000 schemes across England as part of the Environment Agency’s annual capital programme.

This is the highest annual spend ever amounting to an extra £250m channelled into flood and coastal defences in 2021/22 compared with last year.

It includes an extra £40m compared with last year for schemes in Yorkshire and the Humber, a region that has suffered from repeated flooding in recent years, and an extra £53m for the north west, the region which was hit hardest by Storm Christoph this winter.

The new Flood and Coastal Erosion Investment Plan, published today, sets out how new flood and coastal schemes will better protect 336,000 properties by 2027, helping to avoid £32bn in wider economic damages and reducing the national flood risk by up to 11%.

This will see around 2,000 new flood and coastal defences built across England by 2027.

This follows the Environment Agency’s successful delivery of the government’s previous £2.6bn investment between 2015 and 2021, better protecting more than 314,000 homes.

The funding will be accompanied by a consultation in the autumn, where the Government will look at how to better protect frequently flooded communities, following a call for evidence earlier this year.

It will consider how to strengthen the assessment of local circumstances, such as where areas have flooded on multiple occasions, when allocating funding during the six-year plan.

The Government will bring in tighter guidance for planning authorities as part of a package of actions to better protect and prepare communities for flooding.

Householders will benefit from changes to the Flood Re Scheme that will allow insurers to pay an additional amount for the installation of property flood resilience measures after a flood – like air brick covers, flood doors and flood resistant plasterboard. Measures to tackle the risks from surface water flooding are also included in the plans.