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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the recommendations published in the National Flood Resilience Review have been implemented; and whether they have developed plans with the relevant utilities and regulators for temporary improvements to resilience, in line with those already available in the electricity supply industry, in order to meet their target date of Christmas 2016.

Good progress is being made on the implementation of the National Flood Resilience Review (NFRR) recommendations. All infrastructure companies have completed their initial assessments of their vulnerable sites for suitability for temporary flood defences and as a result companies are investing heavily in resilience measures to ensure continuity of supply this winter. This includes putting in place or having deployment plans for temporary defences, and other contingency measures such as rezoning of water supplies and the use of mobile telecommunications cells to reduce the risk of disruptions of services. Further to this, the Government is working with utility companies to improve permanent defences in the longer term.

Coordination of flooding policy is a high priority across Government with a number of Departments responsible for delivering actions arising from the NFRR. As such an inter-Ministerial group has been established to oversee flooding policy, including the implementation of the NFRR.