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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of levels of water storage in on-farm reservoirs.

The National Drought Group meeting on 14 October highlighted the prospect of low winter refill to on-farm storage reservoirs with below average rainfall.

Sufficient winter rainfall is needed to ensure river flows enable abstractors to refill farm reservoirs. Farmers should plan around the risks to winter storage reservoir refill.

The Environment Agency has licensed approximately 1900 abstractions relating to agricultural storage reservoirs. Above average winter rainfall is required in many catchments to refill depleted winter storage reservoirs. Below average rainfall over the autumn and winter would reduce the likelihood of winter storage reservoirs refilling fully due to the current low river levels which is limiting abstraction for refill, especially in parts of east and south-east England.