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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many full-time equivalent staff were working on climate change adaptation in her Department's agencies in (a) 2010-11, (b) 2011-12, (c) 2012-13, (d) 2013-14 and (e) 2014-15; and if she will estimate the likely number of such staff in each of the next five years.

Adaptation is embedded as an integral part of policy across Defra and all levels of Government and within a broad range of programmes and activities that support and build the UK’s resilience to climate change.

Defra, as the lead Department, maintains a core adaptation team that supports the implementation of the Government’s responsibilities for climate change adaptation under the Climate Change Act 2008. Resources allocated to this support role vary according to our position in the five-year cycle set out under the Act and the progress we have made in embedding adaptation within Government policies, programmes and activities.

The core Defra adaptation team delivered the very first UK Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2012 and the very first National Adaptation Programme (NAP) report in 2013. The focus since then has been on delivering those actions set out in the NAP report which has reduced the need for a large core team.

The direct staff support that Defra and its agencies provided for climate change adaptation between 2010-11 and 2014-15 is set out in table A. These figures include Environment Agency staff delivering the Climate Ready Support Service between 2011-12 and 2014-15. It is not possible to predict the numbers of staff that will be required in these adaptation roles in future. It is also not possible to estimate the much larger numbers of full-time equivalent staff across all of the policies, programmes and activities of Defra and its agencies that directly or indirectly support our adaptation objectives.