The government is launching a Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce, with Floods and Drought Minister Emma Hardy due to chair its first meeting on 14 October 2026. According to the gov.uk announcement, the forum is intended to bring flood and drought planning into a single resilience discussion and to give affected communities a more direct route into policy development. The timing reflects an unsettled year in weather conditions. Ministers point to a wet winter, a prolonged hot summer, the third drought in five years and the driest July in almost two centuries, followed by expectations of a wetter and more intense winter.
More than 50 organisations are due to attend the first meeting, including the Environment Agency, the Met Office, mayoral authorities, fire and rescue services, and representatives from farming, water and insurance. The stated aim is to pool operational experience and risk analysis rather than treat flooding and drought as separate policy files. For public bodies and regulated sectors, that matters because both events place pressure on the same water, land and infrastructure systems. A single forum gives government and delivery partners a formal place to compare preparedness, response capability and longer-term planning across agencies and industries.
The first session will focus on winter flood preparedness. The government says national readiness is stronger than it was a year ago and wants members to set out what has changed in their own response arrangements since last winter. The agenda also includes early lessons from the current drought. That should allow departments, local responders and utilities to test whether actions taken for one type of extreme weather are creating enough resilience for the other, especially where reservoir levels, drainage capacity, farm water access and emergency planning interact.
Community representation is presented as a defining feature of the new body. The announcement says community-based groups will be drawn into the taskforce alongside direct engagement with people affected by both flooding and drought, with lived experience intended to shape later policy decisions. That marks a clear change in emphasis. Rather than relying only on agencies, technical advisers and regulated companies, the taskforce is being framed as a place where response planning can be checked against what residents, businesses and land managers report from affected areas.
The new taskforce is not replacing the National Drought Group. The National Drought Group will continue to coordinate the operational response to drought, while the new forum is meant to concentrate on longer-term preparedness and resilience, with links between the two built into its design. That split matters for accountability. It keeps immediate drought management in an established structure, while giving ministers a separate forum to consider broader policy questions such as infrastructure standards, information sharing, public communication and cross-sector planning.
The announcement ties the taskforce to a substantial spending programme on flood protection. It combines UK-wide resilience language with investment figures the government describes as the largest flood defence programme in English history, including at least £10.5 billion committed between 2024 and 2036 to protect homes, businesses and critical infrastructure. Emma Hardy also points to £4.2 billion for existing and new flood defences, while £1.4 billion is due to be spent in 2026/27 on building and repairing assets. The government says each £1 invested in flood defences prevents about £8 in economic damage, presenting resilience spending as both a public safety measure and a way to limit wider economic loss.
Ministers also cite drought measures already under way, including pressure on water companies to reduce leaks, a £65 million funding boost for farmers and rule changes intended to make on-site reservoirs easier to build. Taken together, the package sets out a policy mix of regulatory action, capital spending and planning reform. For local authorities, insurers, utilities and communities, the immediate point to watch will be whether the taskforce turns that coordination into published actions before winter and a clearer route for community evidence to feed into national policy. On the government’s account, the new body is meant to do more than convene institutions; it is meant to close the gap between seasonal emergency response and longer-term resilience planning.