Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation: Rapid Evidence Assessment

The increase in the risk of flooding as a result of extreme weather and climate change makes it essential for local authorities and communities to engage with this issue. Defra is providing grant funding to 13 local authorities throughout England under a new Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) scheme aimed at stimulating community action to increase resilience. The measures being developed include property-level protection, flood resilience groups, volunteer flood wardens and community champions, engagement with more vulnerable groups and efforts to increase financial resilience. Collingwood Environmental Planning (CEP) and a consortium of expert project partners are conducting the evaluation of the Pathfinder scheme. Evaluating policy interventions like the FRCP scheme generates valuable information and contributes to a reliable understanding of which actions work and are effective. Rapid Evidence Assessments (REA) or systematic reviews are integral to evaluations (HM Treasury, 2011) to provide the conceptual framework. They have been developed in the context of the rapid growth in quantity and availability of evidence specifically via electronic databases, together with the demand in government for transparency and accountability within evidence gathering (JWEG, 2013). REAs involve a systematic search for relevant literature guided by experts, based on:  -Clear criteria for inclusion and exclusion of documents and studies  -Measures of quality of research This report provides details of the process and findings of the REA conducted for FRCP evaluation.