Flood funding available

Funding has been provided by the Scottish Government for The Highland Council to administer a flat rate grant of £1,500 to any household, business, community organisation or sports clubs internally affected by flooding since July 2015.  

This will be provided-  

  • To reimburse you for the opportunity cost of not receiving the full benefit of services you pay for through Council Tax /Business Rates while absent from your home, or while your business has had its trading disrupted due to internal property flooding;   
  • To enable you to protect your home or business against future floods by installing new flood barriers, or by carrying out flood resilient repairs such as replacing doors and windows with water resistant alternatives, or moving electricity sockets up to a safer level, etc.

Only properties which have been directly affected by flooding, i.e. which have suffered inundation of water within their premises, are eligible to apply for the grant.  The grant is payable to businesses regardless of any existing business rates reliefs.  

The definition of ‘household’ includes farmhouses, and the definition of ‘business’ premises includes farm buildings such as grain stores etc, but not empty sheds or other buildings where there was no real impact to the farm business.  

In addition to these allocations, the Scottish Government will provide funding to local authorities to enable them to make a flat rate grant payment of £3,000 for businesses where there is evidence that their ability to trade has been severely impacted by flooding at any point since July 2015.  

The grant is a one-off payment to offset costs which cannot be covered by existing insurance, for example clean-up costs, materials and exceptional costs to help the business restore trade, such as marketing and promotion.   

If you wish to apply for a grant, please visit the Council’s website www.highland.gov.uk/floodgrants and complete the attached form.    

To support your application, you will be asked to provide any of the following:

· Photographs / videos of property flooding.

· Independent report from emergency services or local authority attending the property during the flooding event.

· Independent report e.g. from an insurance company that visited after the event.

· Evidence of call to emergency services and / or the local authority advising that property flooding was occurring.

· Evidence of how the flooding has severely affected the ability of your business to trade

If you are unable to provide any of the evidence detailed above, please contact the Council’s Flood Risk Management Team (telephone: 01349 868800; email: frm@highland.gov.uk) for advice.

9 Feb 2016