Flooding financial support

Council Tax discount

A 100% Council Tax discount may be awarded for a minimum of 3 months, if your property meets the above criteria, or longer if you are unable to return to the property.

If you are unable to return home, a 100% Council Tax discount may be awarded in respect of temporary accommodation, in parallel with the discount on your primary residence.

If you have completed a Community Recovery Grant application form, we will complete this assessment on your behalf.

If you have any queries regarding the Council Tax discount, please email [email protected] or call 01242 264215.

Property Flood Resilience Repair Grant Scheme

Gloucestershire County Council are administering a further grant entitled the Property Flood Resilience Repair Grant Scheme. The purpose of the scheme is to assist home and business owners to improve the flood resilience of their individual properties when they repair them after a flood. The outcome from this funding should be that if flooding were to reoccur, damage levels would be considerably lower, and property owners and businesses could return to their properties much more quickly. Up to £5,000 (including VAT) is available per property to make homes and businesses more flood resilient and to allow them to recover more quickly from future flooding.

Information about this grant scheme can be found on the county council's website here along with the form to apply. If you have any queries regarding this grant, please email [email protected].

Business Rates relief

A 100% relief from Business Rates may be awarded for a minimum of 3 months, or until you are able to resume trading from the property if longer, for those business premises that meet the criteria (up to UK subsidy control regime limits). If you have completed a Business Recovery Grant application form, we will use the information provided to assess your eligibility for this relief.

Farming Recovery Fund

DEFRA will be administering a further grant entitled the Farming Recovery Fund. Details of the fund including eligibility will be announced via the government website once the full impacts of storm Henk have been determined.

Freedom of Information Act

Information held by the council is covered by the Freedom of Information Act. It may have to be disclosed in response to a request from any person. However, personal data continues to be protected by the Data Protection Act.

Data Protection Act

We will use the data provided in any application for the purpose of administering your application to the Flood Recovery Fund 2024. It will be shared internally between the relevant council departments to process your application and for monitoring and audit purposes and held in line with our Retention Schedule. We will be collating anonymised data on the addresses of properties flooded within the district and will be sharing this externally. We may need to share data with central government to fulfil our reporting and monitoring requirements for the grant scheme, but will ensure only the minimum data is shared, and this will be anonymised where possible.

For further information on how we use your data please see our Data Protection policy.

Please be advised that the council will not accept deliberate manipulation and fraud and any applicant caught falsifying their statements or evidence to gain grant money will face prosecution and any funding issued will be subject to claw back, as may any grants paid in error.

Previous flooding financial support

Community Recovery Grant

This grant is now closed to applications. The deadline for applications was 5pm on Friday 1 March 2024.

Households were eligible for a £500 Community Recovery Grant if their residence was deemed to have been impacted by Storm Henk between 2-12 January 2024 i.e. the residence was flooded internally or was unliveable for a period of greater than 48 hours.

Qualifying criteria for residential properties:

The property you are applying for must be your primary residence. Second or empty homes are not eligible.
Flood water must have entered the inside living space of your property. Porches, greenhouses, garages, sheds, outhouses etc. will not be considered as eligible for this scheme.

Your property must have been unliveable for at least 48 hours because:

Access to the property was severely restricted (e.g. upper floor flats with no access)
Key services such as sewerage, draining and electricity were severely affected
Flooding has caused significant damage to the property meaning it would be or would have been advisable for you to leave the premises for any period of time, regardless of whether you did vacate or not

Business Recovery Grant

This grant is now closed to applications. The deadline for applications was 5pm on Friday 8 March 2024.

Businesses were eligible for a £2,500 Business Recovery Grant if their premises was deemed to have met the eligibility criteria and were either directly or indirectly impacted by Storm Henk between 2-12 January 2024. Please see the guidance and FAQs for further information.

Qualifying criteria:

The Department of Business and Trade has established a scheme to support eligible SME businesses whose premises have been severely impacted by Storm Henk, with immediate recovery costs.

Small-to-medium sized businesses in the Forest of Dean District with affected business premises could be eligible for grants of £2,500 from the Business Recovery Grant scheme.

Eligible business premises (namely premises from which a small or medium sized business (“SME”) need to be actively trading and do not include warehouses or sheds unless the business actively trades from the warehouse or shed) within flooded areas:

are premises which are directly impacted by the weather event – for instance there was flood damage to the premises; or
are premises which are indirectly impacted by the weather event for more than one day – for instance the business premises has had no/highly restricted access to the premises, to equipment and/or stock as a result of flooding, restricted access for customers, suppliers and/or staff; and directly suffered a loss of trade as a result.

The qualifying period is 2-12 January 2024 for those SME businesses premises severely negatively impacted by Storm Henk.