National Flood Resilience Strategy: Implementation Plan

Work already underway

Since the publication of Scotland's National Flood Resilience Strategy extensive work has already taken place including:

People

• The Flood Resilience Strategy Implementation Group brings together policies across Scotland and is made up of stakeholders across Scotland to feed in to and monitor progress on actions.
• On top of this Scottish Government has funded:
• the Dynamic Coast programme to continue to identify areas at the greatest risk from coastal change erosion and coastal flooding in this decade and into the future.
• the Scottish Flood Forum to provide support and advice to individuals and communities before, during and after flooding events and to establish a network of community resilience groups in areas at risk of flooding.
• the Conservation Volunteers to support community-led flood resilience through citizen science, volunteer training, partnership working and education
• support for people to understand what to do if a flood is likely where they live though a newly developed, behaviourally informed Household Flood Plan template.
• Scottish Government has published a Flood Recovery Framework clarifying the level of support that can be provided to local authorities and communities in the short term after a major flood event.
• Scottish Government also commissioned Scotland’s Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), to consider effective cross-policy actions that could be implemented in Scotland to mitigate the negative mental health and broader wellbeing impacts of flooding. The resulting report, Reducing the Mental Health and Wellbeing Impacts of Flooding, was published in May 2026.

Places

• In 2025, Hawick flood protection scheme completed, bringing the total schemes completed in Scotland since 2017 to 21. Four more are under construction and 2 have construction contracts in place. A further 3 are progressing through Local Hearing or Public Local Inquiry.
• COSLA and the Scottish Government have been working closely together and have agreed additional funding controls that will improve certainty around the final costs of the cycle one schemes.
• This has allowed Scottish Government Ministers and COSLA leaders to agree a new distribution model for flood resilience funding in 2026/27 as part of a managed move towards a new long-term model with improved governance and gateways for nationally funded high value flood resilience measures like flood protection schemes. For the first time the distribution model in 26/27 will include a minimum allocation – in particular supporting island councils.
• Scottish Government has published updated Building Standards Section 3.3: Flooding and Groundwater. Strengthening national guidance on Property Flood Resilience (PFR), embedding resilience and recoverability into building design requirements and aligning building standards with flood risk management policy climate change projections and surface‑water risk and applying to new buildings, conversions and significant alterations.
• Through the Code of Practice on Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture, we are encouraging Scottish agricultural businesses to undertake different actions or measures which will help contribute to sustainable and regenerative farming, including water resource management. From 2030, it is our intention that this will be directly supported by specific activities that farmers can select to unlock funding.

Processes

• Work to develop an improved governance model for future programmes of flood protection spend has continued.
• Scottish Government has provided funding to SEPA to deliver a business case, models and principles for a Flood Advisory Service that will learn lessons from the previous programme and provide improved governance and gateway processes for new nationally funded flood resilience measures like flood protection schemes.
• Recognising the importance of improving national understanding of flood and coastal assets and building on an initial exploratory phase of work carried out by SEPA, Scottish Government and SEPA have provided funding to develop a foundational asset database for Scotland, as well as undertake more detailed assessment of assets that are critical to SEPA’s flood warning processes
• Scottish Government has provided funding to SEPA to purchase 8 additional nearshore wave buoys to improve Scotland’s coastal flood warning system to better protect lives and property.
• Executive leaders from across public bodies in Scotland have established a programme of work proactively working together on the innovative Pioneer Catchments project – looking at how better these organisations can work together to achieve their outcomes through place-based service delivery as part of their efforts on Public Service Reform. This looks across environmental services including water management and becoming resilient to climate impacts.
• In January 2025 the draft Infrastructure Strategy 2027-2037 went to consultation including the need to deliver more climate resilient infrastructure.
• Scottish Government has also procured coastal and land Lidar to improve flood mapping data.
• The Climate Ready Regions initiative is progressing towards national coverage, with all 32 local authorities now engaged in regional multi-stakeholder partnerships to collectively identify and address resilience priorities, including flood risk.
• The Climate Ready Infrastructure Scotland Forum has grown to 25 operators and owners. This year Forum members plan to pool investment to conduct a Scotland-wide assessment to better understand shared and interdependent risks, including flooding.
• From 2030 it is our intention to improve the ease of access to and clarity of support for farmers and crofters to manage the land sustainable and promote climate resilient land use including flood resilience through the agriculture reform programme.

The Flood Resilience Strategy runs until 2045 and outlines a long-term shift in strategic approach that responds to our changing climate. The scale of the challenge Scotland faces means that we must move beyond “fixing” individual flooding problems and instead support a national strategic shift to creating flood resilient places and communities. Everyone benefits from a flood resilient Scotland, and everyone has a role to play.

As outlined above, substantial action has already taken place to lay the foundations of implementation. This implementation plan lays out the next steps we and others will take in the next 4 years. The Plan is not exhaustive, and we would like to acknowledge the broad range of actions and activities carried out by individuals and flood risk communities across Scotland that may not be captured and are just as important.

Progress on the actions in the Plan will be scrutinised by the cross organisation Flood Resilience Strategy Implementation Group.

This work complements work taking place across Scottish Government on adaptation and improving resilience. Some of that work is outlined in the policies referenced in appendix C.