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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current storage levels in on-farm reservoirs.

The Environment Agency (EA) does not routinely monitor the storage levels in the privately owned 2,000 farm storage reservoirs in England. We know that many farm storage reservoirs are currently at low levels and the EA, working with the agriculture sector, has assessed that at least average long term winter rainfall is required to ensure they are sufficiently full ahead of next year's irrigation season. Rainfall below 100% will mean that filling reservoirs this winter will be challenging.

To help improve its understanding of the prospects of filling farm storage reservoirs, the EA is planning to provide regular updates to the farming sector on river flows at key strategic flow sites and whether they are at levels which will allow abstraction to refill reservoirs.