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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the number of reservoirs that were full as of 9 January 2024.

The Environment Agency publishes regular assessments of the current water situation on gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/water-situation-reports-for-england). Individual water companies also publish their own reservoir levels on their respective websites.

The latest information received by the Environment Agency from water companies for week ending 9 January 2024 indicates that stocks across England are overall 92% full. Across the 31 strategic reservoir or reservoir groups reported nationally, just over one third (39 percent) are completely full, and approximately two thirds (68 percent) are greater than 90 % full. Please note some online reservoirs are managed to enable them to capture excess water to reduce downstream flood risk during the winter period so will be managed to allow this to occur.

The remaining reservoirs are either still being refilled, are undergoing planned operational maintenance which requires levels to be reduced to allow the work to be undertaken safely, or currently waiting for high turbidity levels associated with flood water to recede before pumping into them is resumed.

Although, the Environment Agency doesn’t routinely collect individual farm reservoir storage information, working with the sector, notably the Water for Food Group which includes various Water Abstractor Groups and the NFU, within its membership, it has collated a representative snapshot of refill across England. Most of these reservoirs are full or are on track to be full (currently typically between 75-90% full) before the end of the licensed refill season, i.e. the end of March.