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Written Question
Supermarkets: Delivery Services
Tuesday 15th June 2021

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to work with supermarket retailers to help ensure that elderly or disabled residents remain able to access (a) home delivery slots and (b) good quality produce with a suitable shelf life.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

Central and local government have worked in partnership with supermarkets to enable vulnerable individuals to access prioritised supermarket delivery slots until 21 June, which has facilitated millions of deliveries. Defra continues to hold regular conversations with major supermarkets to raise awareness of issues related to food access for elderly and disabled people, including the availability of supermarket deliveries.

There are a number of options open to elderly or disabled individuals who want support to access food. Vulnerable individuals can contact their local authority, or request support from an NHS volunteer responder in gaining access to food, prescriptions and other essential items by calling the phone line or visiting the Royal Voluntary Service website.

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain, with a food industry that is well versed in dealing with scenarios that can impact food supply. We remain in regular contact with the food industry and suppliers, who hold the expertise, capability and levers to ensure that all consumers continue to have access to a wide range of food products when they shop.


Written Question
Export Health Certificates
Monday 1st March 2021

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that products of animal or plant origin receive the correct certification in a timely manner from (a) vets, or (b) The Animal and Plant Health Authority to prevent unnecessary delays in exporting.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

Export Health Certificates (EHC) for products of animal origin are authorised by Official Veterinarians (OVs) acting on behalf of the Competent Authority; the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). Certificates are generated through the Export Health Certificates online service, managed by APHA. Phytosanitary certificates for plants and plant products are authorised by APHA inspectors.

Prior to the end of the transition period, APHA stress tested its services in order to prepare for an increase in demand of animal and plants products. As a result, mitigations, including the recruitment of additional Plant Health and Seeds Inspectors, were put in place to ensure there was sufficient capacity to accommodate an expected increase in phytosanitary certification. In addition, APHA officials facilitated an increase in EHC certification through targeted training of OVs and the creation of a Certifying Support Officer function to support OVs.

APHA regular monitors all its activities related to transition and looks to improve its services provided to exporters and other stakeholders continually.


Written Question
Flood Control: North West
Friday 16th October 2020

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to prevent inland flooding in the North West.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Across the North West (NW), investment from the Environment Agency (EA) and local councils from April 2015 to March 2021 will better protect approximately 42,000 properties against inland and coastal flooding by April 2021. Around 5,000 of these will be better protected this financial year. Included in this programme was the £21 million investment at Lytham (Lancashire) that benefits 2,300 homes.

The EA carries out maintenance of critical flood defences and rivers that pose the greatest risk to communities. 600 miles of open channels are managed across the NW. For example, in Cumbria and Lancashire, 13 miles of culverts are regularly inspected to ensure water can flow freely.

The EA is investing approximately £4 million in natural flood management across the NW. This is in addition to further investment in natural flood management by the NW Regional Flood Coastal Committee’s local levy.

Planning, responding and recovering from flooding is a key aspect of the EA’s work in the NW. The EA works closely with all five local resilience forums to deliver a coordinated local response to flooding - ensuring they have a large number of trained and capable staff, temporary defences, pumps and other key equipment. They also help many local community groups develop emergency plans.

The EA warns and informs the public about flood risk. Across the NW, 147,669 properties at risk receive flood warnings. By March 2022 all properties at high risk of flooding from main rivers or the sea will be able to receive a flood warning.

The EA also works closely with local planning authorities to help ensure local plans appropriately account for current and future flood risk. The EA comments on strategically significant individual planning applications to ensure flood risk is appropriately accounted for in decision making. They also regulate work in or near main rivers to ensure that it doesn’t increase flood risk or cause environmental damage.


Written Question
Flood Control: Lancashire
Friday 16th October 2020

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of inland flood defence spending in Lancashire in each of the last five years.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The table below shows the total amount of capital spend for inland and coastal flood defence projects in Lancashire since 2015.

Financial year

2015-2016

2016-2017

2017-2018

2018-2019

2019-2020

2020-2021

Lancashire County Total spend
(£m)

33.3

37.13

19.23

22.73

14.12

16.75

Lancashire County Government spend
(£m)

30.54

35.96

18.83

21.71

11.31

9.05

Lancashire County homes better protected

8,752

7,781

6,113

5,728

2,562

2,287

‘County Total Spend’ includes public and private contributions. ‘County Government Spend’ is Government Grant-in-Aid.


Written Question
Flood Control
Friday 16th October 2020

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans his Department has to prevent future inland flooding.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Government’s recently published FCERM Policy Statement and the Environment Agency’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy set out the long term plans for managing inland flooding in England. In addition, at the March 2020 budget the Government announced a further £5.2 billion funding in flood defences in England over six years from April 2021. This will help deliver 2,000 schemes to better protect 336,000 properties and 550km of transport infrastructure from inland and coastal flooding by March 2027.


Written Question
Flood Control
Friday 16th October 2020

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans his Department has to enable farm owners and landowners to take more effective action in preventing inland flooding.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Many farmers and landowners are already taking actions to help manage flood risks – both risks to their own land and risks to surrounding areas. Government provides financial incentives for some of these activities within Countryside Stewardship and, through the Catchment Sensitive Farming advice programme, we have piloted including flood risk management within integrated advice to farmers.

The Government policy statement on flood and coastal erosion risk management, published in July 2020, explains our plans to do more to harness the opportunities rural landscapes bring to increase resilience for people living and working in rural areas and further downstream.

We will ensure our countryside is resilient to flooding so that our sustainable food industry can flourish, and our farming and agricultural sectors can thrive. To achieve this, risk management authorities will work with landowners to maximise good land and soil management and to implement natural flood management solutions.

We will join up actions for water, floods, the environment and farming to ensure actions that promote good soil and land management, water storage for farm use, and the restoration of peat, moors and other land are naturally designed to support flood risk management.

A key element of this will be the Environmental Land Management scheme, founded on the principle of public money for public goods. Farmers and other land managers may enter into agreements to be paid for delivering a range of public goods as set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, including: a reduction in and protection from environmental hazards such as flooding.


Written Question
Sewers: Lytham
Friday 10th May 2019

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what (a) estimate of the number and (b) assessment of the composition of discharges into (i) Liggard Brook and (ii) Main Drain by United Utilities has been made by the Environment Agency in each of the last five years.

Answered by Thérèse Coffey

There are three United Utilities discharges into Liggard Brook and Main Drain (Ballam Road Pumping Station and Warton Pumping Station respectively) and Lytham Pumping Station at the confluence of the two.

The table below summarises (a) the number of spills from these locations. The figures during 2015 are high due to Storm Desmond. We do not currently hold data from 2016 which is held by United Utilities.

Discharge

FY 2013-14

FY 2014-15

FY 2015-16

1 Apr 2017 to 30 Sep 2017

Calendar year 2018

Ballam Road PS

0

1

51

1

11

Warton PS

16

14

0

46

33

Lytham PS

5

3

50

3

26

(b) Discharges are from the combined sewer system before it has been treated, so they are made up of sewage diluted by rainfall runoff from roads and roofs.


Written Question
Flood Control: Fylde
Thursday 18th April 2019

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the number of houses protected in the Fylde constituency as a result of (a) work done to Dock Road pumping station and (b) the Church Scar Coast Protection Scheme.

Answered by Thérèse Coffey

The number of houses better protected from flooding as a result of (a) work done to Dock Road pumping station is 652 and (b) the Church Scar Coast Protection Scheme is 2,347.


Written Question
Flood Control: Lancashire
Thursday 18th April 2019

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 7 February 2019 to Question 218283, what funding has been allocated to the flood defence works in that Answer and related works in (a) the Fylde Coast and (b) Lancashire.

Answered by Thérèse Coffey

Funding has been allocated as follows to the flood defence works referenced in the answer of 7 February 2019 to PQ 218283:

  • £22,000 to the completed embankment improvements to the south of Moss Side, and £15,000 to embankment improvements to the north of Moss Side, which are planned for April 2019.

  • £138,000 for forecast maintenance costs in 2019/20 in areas such as Main Drain and Liggard Brook, including £57,000 for channel maintenance and £81,000 operating costs for pumping stations and tidal outfalls.

  • Over £20 million to the Fairhaven and Church Scar Coast Protection Scheme.

  • £1.2 million to the Starr Hill Sand Dunes project.

The Environment Agency is delivering a joint capital programme with other Risk Management Authorities to better protect over 34,000 homes from flooding in Lancashire between 2015 and 2021 at an estimated cost of £100 million. This programme has already delivered better protection to nearly 28,000 homes and over 1,000 businesses.

In addition to the capital programme, in 2018/19 £3 million was allocated in Lancashire for maintaining flood risk assets such as flood basins and embankments. This level of investment is expected to continue until 2021 to ensure these assets are in the right condition to protect people and homes.


Written Question
Flood Control: Fylde
Thursday 14th February 2019

Asked by: Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve flood prevention in rural Fylde.

Answered by Thérèse Coffey

The Environment Agency (EA) invests where it can provide the greatest benefit to people and property to better protect against the risk of flooding.

The EA has recently completed the £3 million East Lytham Flood Alleviation Scheme which better protects 652 properties and a large rural area of South Fylde.

The EA completed embankment improvements in 2018 south of Moss Side, with another embankment improvement just north of Moss Side planned for April this year.

The EA also carries out routine maintenance across rural areas where they link urban areas such as the Main Drain and Liggard Brook catchments.

In wider Fylde, the Fairhaven and Church Scar Coast Protection Scheme, which includes Granny's Bay, is currently in construction and due to be completed by 2020. The scheme has been funded by over £20 million of grant in aid and will better protect 2347 properties.

Blackpool Council is also delivering the Starr Hill Sand Dunes project in partnership with Fylde Borough Council and Lancashire Wildlife Trust. The scheme will better protect 521 properties, whilst also enhancing the dune system through environmental improvements.

The EA also attends the Fylde Making Space for Water Group and continues to actively work with partners to address flooding issues in Fylde.