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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much and what proportion of her Department's budget was spent on new equipment for dealing with flooding in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022.

The Environment Agency (EA) leads on flood and coastal risk management, and is allocated funding from the Government to cover this work. This includes flood and coastal risk management schemes, natural flood management, maintenance of our flood and coastal assets, improving our flood incident response, systems, equipment, and staff training.

Between 2015-2021 the EA was allocated £2.6 billion to invest in flood and coastal risk management. Between 2021-2027 the EA has been allocated £5.2 billion to invest in flood and coastal risk management. As part of this allocation the EA invested in the following:

• 40km of temporary flood barriers
• 250 pumps, including 20 ultra-high-volume pumps, to divert water and assist with flood recovery
• Eight incident command vehicles (during the period 2014-2021).
• Vehicles/agricultural and construction assets.

In addition, for 2021/22 there are four broad categories of activities that are undertaken in managing defence assets, as set out in the Flood and coastal erosion risk management: an investment plan for 2021 to 2027 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

A detailed breakdown of funding for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England for the year 2020/21, and the allocation for 2021/22 can be found here Funding for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Details of the EA’s Asset Information and Maintenance Programme can be found here: Asset Information and Maintenance Programme (data.gov.uk).