Alex Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alex Cunningham on 2016-02-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her speech at the Oxford Farming Conference on 6 January 2016, how she plans to ensure that effective national strategies on flooding and flood defences are created and maintained.
Rory Stewart
The Environment Agency (EA) has a duty under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to develop, maintain, apply and monitor a national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy for England. The strategy was published in 2011. The Act also lays down that the EA must report to the Minister on flood and costal erosion risk management including the application of the national strategy. The EA publishes this report annually.
In addition Government is undertaking a National Flood Resilience Review which will assess how the country can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events. It will focus on four key areas: updating our climate modelling and stress-testing the nation’s resilience to flood risk; assessing the resilience of our important infrastructure like electricity substations; our temporary defences; and our future investment strategy. The Government launched a call for evidence on 2 February. The Review will align closely with Defra’s work on catchment-level management of the water cycle in the Government’s 25 year Environment Plan.
