Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
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 Answers of 11 January 2016 to Question 21375 and of 18 January 2016 to Question 22215 on flood control: per capita costs, what steps she took to ensure that the geographical boundaries of Environment Agency areas and census regions matched for the purposes of those calculations.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Public facing Environment Agency Areas match local council boundaries used by the Office of National Statistics (with the exception of ‘Central Bedfordshire’) and so census figures can be scaled to the Environment Agency Areas that the flood risk management Grant in Aid allocations were taken from. As Central Bedfordshire is wholly within the Areas that make up our eastern hub this does not change the per capita calculation.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
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 11 January 2016 to Question 21375 on flooding control: per capita costs, what official data sets were used for her calculations in that Answer.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The Grant in Aid figures used in the calculations are based on the published six year capital programme. They can be found on the GOV.UK website at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/programme-of-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-management-schemes.
Population figures are sourced from the Office of National Statistics data from the 2011 Census for England and Wales.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will commission an urgent review of flood defences in (a) Leeds city region and (b) Yorkshire.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Whenever an exceptional event happens it is important to review what happened and how to prepare for the future, and the Environment Agency will always do this after a flood incident.
The flood response in Yorkshire will be overseen by Transport Minister Robert Goodwill who has been appointed as Flooding Envoy to the county and will track progress on recovery and identify lessons learnt
Work has also already started on the National Resilience Review, which is considering forecasting and modelling, resilience of key infrastructure and the way we make decisions on flood expenditure. The Review is being delivered by a cross-Government team and will be published in the summer.
£40 million funding has been committed to repair flood defences in response to the flooding. Going forward, as part of our new flood defence programme, we have been working with Leeds City Council and we are investing £33 million in a project to better protect Leeds City Centre. Construction of the new defences is already underway.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much her Department has spent on flood defences in the Leeds city region in each year since 2010; and how much she plans to spend on such defences in each year until 2020.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Between 2010-2011 and 2014-2015,£57.2m was allocated for flood defences in Leeds City Region. From 2015-2016 to 2019-2020, a further £50.2m has been allocated for further flood protection measures.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of flood defences in the Leeds city region.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Whenever an exceptional event happens it is important to review what happened and how to prepare for the future, and the Environment Agency will always do this after a flood incident.
The flood response in Yorkshire will be overseen by Transport Minister Robert Goodwill who has been appointed as Flooding Envoy to the county and will track progress on recovery and identify lessons learnt
Work has also already started on the National Resilience Review, which is considering forecasting and modelling, resilience of key infrastructure and the way we make decisions on flood expenditure. The Review is being delivered by a cross-Government team and will be published in the summer.
£40 million funding has been committed to repair flood defences in response to the flooding. Going forward, as part of our new flood defence programme, we have been working with Leeds City Council and we are investing £33 million in a project to better protect Leeds City Centre. Construction of the new defences is already underway.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what projection she has made of the number of full-time equivalent staff working in the Environment Agency in each year until 2020.
Answered by George Eustice
There are no firm projections over the next 5 years of the number of full-time equivalent staff working in the Environment Agency. Formal budgets have not yet been allocated for 2016/17 to 2020/21.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
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 her article of 30 December 2015 in the Yorkshire Post, what the evidential basis is for the statement that the Government is investing £54 per person on flood defences in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria, the East Midlands and Northumbria, and £42 per person in the South East.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The figures on which the statement is based represent the total amount of Government Grant in Aid for flood and coastal erosion risk management in the Environment Agency regions stated between 2015/16 – 2020/21, divided by the total population of those regions.
Asked by: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in which post codes in the UK agreed limits for air pollution were breached in the most recent year available.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Location data for limit value exceedances is compiled at a zone level and has also been converted to local authority level to assist local authority air quality assessments. With over 1 million postcodes in the UK the information requested could only be converted into postcode level data at a disproportionate cost. 194 local authorities exceeded the annual mean limit values for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in 2013. A list of these local authorities is attached.