The Government’s partnership funding approach is designed to ensure that funding contributions can be secured from a range of sources. It also ensures a consistent national approach to allocating the investment programme, prioritising those schemes that secure the greatest benefits with a higher percentage of Government funding. The previous investment programme secured around £530 million of partnership funding contributions. The partnership funding approach is successfully delivering its objective, as demonstrated by an independent evaluation8 published in November 2018. This evaluation identified that the partnership funding approach enabled 400 more schemes to be delivered and better protected 65,000 homes. This would not have been possible under the previous funding policy. The Government’s Policy Statement sets out actions to further strengthen incentives for generating partnership funding, particularly from the private sector. The partnership funding contributions required in the new six-year investment programme, from April 2021, will be lower than that required in the previous investment programme as a direct result of the additional funding that the Government is providing, as well as the changes already made to the partnership funding rules in April 2020. As such, Government is confident that the level of partnership funding required is achievable. Partnership funding, including private sector contributions, will be regularly monitored by the Government and Environment Agency to ensure key risks are identified early and enable mitigating action to be taken, as required. This includes monthly monitoring and more intensive support by the Environment Agency for those current and future schemes with the greatest benefit and highest risk of non-delivery.