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The government has reached a deal with insurers to ensure that households in flood-risk areas can obtain protection.
Environment minister Phil Woolas said the government had signed up to a 25-year plan to improve flood defences.
And insurance companies have agreed to provide protection for property with a risk from flood of less than one-in-75.
Woolas told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "The insurance companies very reasonably said that it is necessary to have a long-term strategy - 25 years is the figure that we are going ahead with.
"We are looking at coastal flooding, as well as river flooding and surface water flooding, to ensure that the increased investment that we have - and we have increased investment in flood defences quite substantially in this country - is sustained in the long term."
The minister refused to comment on homes at more than one-in-75 risk, saying that was "not for government to declare".
And he called on the Environment Agency to use new powers to prevent developments being built that are at risk of flood.
"What has changed is the climate change predictions that the scientists are giving us, that the extreme weather conditions are going to increase in the decades to come," he said.
"That requires a long-term strategy... it is something we have been negotiating with the insurance industry in some detail.
"They, quite understandably, want to have assurances that homes are protected and we, quite understandably, want to do that in any event."
Assistant director of the Association of British Insurers Justin Jacobs told the same programme: "If the government can ensure that as many people as possible are protected, we will be able to make sure that we can offer affordable insurance to all of our customers who want it.
"The pressure remains on the government because they must deliver those defences to people in order to make sure we can offer that affordable insurance."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd