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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of utility assets she plans will be covered by National Flood Resilience Plan.

The National Flood Resilience Review did not examine individual utility assets, as responsibility for defending these from floods rests with each utility company.

Instead, it asked the telecommunications and water sectors to assess their vulnerable sites and put in place measures to increase the resilience of their services where appropriate.

Companies have delivered on this commitment, and are now in the process of making improvements to resilience, where feasible, ahead of Christmas 2016. This includes purchasing temporary flood defences, increasing redundancy or utilising alternative assets where temporary flood defences are not suitable and working with local emergency responders on broader local flood plans. Utilities companies are also working with government and regulators to ensure appropriate long term flood defence measures are put in place.