GOV.UK says the government will launch a Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce this week, with its first meeting scheduled for Wednesday 14 October 2026. Ministers say the body is intended to strengthen how the country plans for and responds to extreme weather, while giving affected communities a clearer route into national resilience policy. The announcement marks a more joined-up treatment of water risk. Flooding and drought are being presented as connected pressures on homes, businesses, public services and infrastructure, rather than as separate seasonal problems.
The government is framing the move against a year of sharp weather contrasts. According to the announcement, a wet winter was followed by a long, hot summer, bringing a third drought in five years and the driest July in almost two centuries, while a wetter and more intense winter is now anticipated. That context matters for preparedness. A resilience system built only for response after an incident will not answer questions around water availability, drainage, farm impacts, property protection, local recovery and service continuity.
GOV.UK says Floods and Drought Minister Emma Hardy will bring together representatives from more than 50 organisations at the first meeting. Participants are expected to include the Environment Agency, the Met Office, mayoral authorities, Fire and Rescue Services, and representatives from the farming, water and insurance sectors. For policy delivery, the format is significant. It creates a single forum in which forecast data, operational capacity, infrastructure pressures and economic exposure can be discussed together before winter conditions arrive.
The government has said community voices will be central to the taskforce through direct engagement and wider participation from community-based groups. That is a notable design choice, because it puts lived experience closer to the point where preparedness priorities are set. In practical terms, that should give officials a stronger evidence base on how warnings land locally, where recovery bottlenecks appear, and which resilience measures are most useful to households and smaller businesses facing repeated disruption.
For its first session, the taskforce is due to focus on national preparedness for potential flooding this winter. The government says the discussion will review evidence that the country is better prepared than it was last year and examine how participating bodies have improved their response arrangements. The same meeting will also consider early lessons from the current drought and whether further changes are needed to improve resilience to both flood and drought risk. That places immediate readiness and longer-term adaptation in the same policy conversation.
The new body is intended to complement, rather than replace, the National Drought Group. GOV.UK says the National Drought Group will continue to coordinate and oversee the operational response to drought, while its expertise will inform the taskforce's work on strategy, preparedness and longer-term resilience. The government also points to measures already taken during the drought period, including action to press water companies on leakage, a £65 million funding boost for farmers, and rule changes designed to make it easier to build on-site reservoirs.
Ministers are pairing the new governance model with capital investment. The government says at least £10.5 billion has been committed between 2024 and 2036 to protect homes, businesses and critical infrastructure from flooding, describing it as the largest flood defence programme in English history. For 2026/27, planned spending on building and repairing flood defences is £1.4 billion, and the announcement says every £1 invested prevents around £8 in economic damage. Emma Hardy has also highlighted £4.2 billion for existing and new flood defences, underscoring that resilience is being presented as both a public safety issue and an economic protection measure.