Jamie Reed – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jamie Reed on 2016-02-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to businesses in Cumbria of recent flooding and severe weather.

Anna Soubry

The Department does not have an estimate of the cost to businesses in Cumbria as a result of recent flooding. We expect at least 2,000 businesses to have been impacted by the flooding, based on reports from local partners, with many more affected as a result of secondary issues such as damage to important infrastructure such as the A591.

We know that getting timely support in place is really important and that is why we moved quickly, with Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, to put in place a business recovery scheme. Cumbria have already received £2.6 million of funding to begin paying to businesses to help them recover and as more applications are made by businesses we’ll provide additional funding from the £11m we have made available to support business recovery following this winter’s flooding.

Flooded businesses also benefit from businesses rates relief and can also apply for up to £5,000 to make sure that property repairs include greater resilience to any future flooding.