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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when the last time was that Animal and Plant Health Agency IT systems were upgraded.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) has a wide range of applications and IT systems all of which require maintenance, update, and refresh

As these activities are regular and carried out independently per system, each year work is continually undertaken to assess and then either remediate, modernise or replace IT systems

The level of development undertaken depends on several factors including government investment during a Spending Review period, evidence from formal IT Health Checks and an assessment of the level of risk held within the IT estate

Defra has different programmes underway which invest in the APHA's IT estate, including the Legacy Application Programme and the APHA's Delivering Sustainable Futures programme. The Delivering Sustainable Futures programme seeks to enhance the APHA's IT estate by developing modern, stable, lower cost and more interoperable IT architecture.