Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 14 May to Question 24911 on Buildings, what was the (a) location and (b) operating body of each building.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The locations of the four properties identified with RAAC are:
1. Starcross, Exeter
2. Worcester County Hall, Worcester
3. Polwhele, Truro
4. Itchen Abbas, Winchester.
All have been either declared safe, or partially or fully vacated to minimise risk while remediation is underway. The operating body for each property is Defra Group Property, who both work with landlords and manage a range of building occupiers across core Defra, our Executive Agencies and Arm’s Length Bodies.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) has been found on his Department's estate.
Answered by Mark Spencer
After significant survey work across the estate, we have identified 4 Properties where RAAC is present. Where necessary for Health and Safety, buildings have been closed or partially closed to enable remediation.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his Department’s transparency data Spending over £500 with an electronic purchasing card solution for September 2023, updated on 20 December 2023, what the purpose was of spending £630 with See Tickets on Other Miscellaneous Expenses.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The expenditure of £630 relates to the purchase of 30 tickets to a UK Parliament Multimedia Tour on 9 August 2023. This formed part of a summer internship induction day. The tour gave interns knowledge on the history, heritage and work of UK Parliament today as they begin working for Defra.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fifty-first Report of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2022-23 on Tackling Defra’s ageing digital services, HC 737, published on 10 May 2023, what steps his Department has taken to replace legacy computer systems since the publication of that report.
Answered by Mark Spencer
We continue to invest in replacing legacy IT systems, both through the dedicated upgrade programmes and through major programme deliveries.
For example, our Legacy Application Programme is addressing technical debt which includes exiting from old data centres, removing obsolescence, bringing applications into mainstream support, and improving their security posture. Over 180 applications have had their most critical legacy technology addressed through this programme. We are addressing legacy technology in other applications through digital transformation and policy programmes where this provides a better coordinated approach. This approach has enabled us to remediate the most critical legacy technology and continue to remediate priority applications to April 2025.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many flood support officers his Department employed in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) does not have “flood support officers” as a role. The EA has numerous flood incident response roles that staff hold alongside their day jobs. Staff are regularly trained and exercised in these roles. Some of these roles are only activated during an incident and some are on standby 24/7 365 days a year.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many sewage releases there have been in (a) Sunderland and (b) the Sunderland Central constituency in (i) 2023 and (ii) 2022.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) provides information on when and for how long sewage discharges have occurred. All EDM data is published online (opens in a new tab) annually since 2020. The 2022 data was published in March 2023 (opens in a new tab). The full EDM data set for 2023 will be published by the Environment Agency in March 2024.