To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential of rewilding to reduce the risk of flooding in the UK.

Rewilding techniques, such as woodland creation, leaky debris dams and peatbog restoration can have an impact in slowing the flow of flood water downstream. The Government’s natural flood management demonstration projects, including those at Pickering in Yorkshire and Holnicote in Somerset, have demonstrated that these types of measures can be effective in helping to manage flood risk at a catchment scale, slowing the flow of water and reducing local impacts when carefully incorporated into a wider suite of catchment measures

The Government’s long term plan for the environment will look at how to deliver benefits across wider landscapes and whole water catchment areas through more integrated catchment management. Incorporating natural flood management measures is at the heart of this.