To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 16 July 2007, Official Report, column 77W, on Floods: Milton Keynes, (1) why Milton Keynes Unitary Authority did not receive a payment from the Flood Recovery Grant Scheme; (151821)

As announced by the Prime Minister on 7 July, the £10 million Flood Recovery Grant Scheme was established to support the work being undertaken by local authorities in helping their communities to recover from the exceptional and widespread flooding which had occurred.

Our particular intention was that authorities should use it to help those in greatest and most immediate need, and on that basis we developed a methodology which balanced fairness with moving rapidly to announcing allocations. Informed by a brief and useful consultation with local government, I allocated grant on the basis of the relative numbers of households affected by flooding in lower-tier local authority areas. This was explained in the letters sent by officials notifying chief executives that grant had been allocated to their authorities. The allocations confirmed on both 13 and 20 July were based on the best available such information held at the time of decision.