Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many full-time equivalent staff were assigned to the (a) identification and (b) removal of yellow-legged Asian hornet nests in (i) 2025, (ii) 2023 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There has been 0.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff assigned to nest destruction in 2022, 2023 and 2025. This means they were assigned to that role and available on call when needed.
There has been one FTE Senior Operational Lead dedicated to yellow-legged hornet since 2024 to manage the overall response.
No other staff are employed or allocated on a full-time basis to yellow-legged hornet The response is managed by redeploying staff from other business as usual delivery, based on outbreak demand.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether any dedicated Asian hornet rapid response teams have been (a) disbanded and (b) downsized since 2023.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The response to Yellow-Legged Hornet (YLH) also known as Asian hornet is carried out by the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s (APHA) National Bee Unit (NBU). The NBU do this as part of the overall programme of work that they deliver for Defra from the funding allocated to APHA. The NBU has been taking action against YLH since 2016 and has developed a fine-tuned effective response. They frequently find a nest within a day of an initial sighting being reported. Therefore, Defra has not established dedicated Asian hornet rapid response teams.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to support the development of a public-facing data access tool to allow independent verification of water quality alerts issued by South West Water.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is important that the public have access to reliable information on storm overflow discharges. The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced a duty for water companies to publish data related to discharges from all emergency overflows within one hour of the discharge beginning. This matches the pre-existing duty for storm overflows, which was introduced on 01 January.
To support this, Water UK have launched a central hub that provides discharge data of every storm overflow in England on a single website.
As part of Price Review 2024 (PR24), which runs from 2025–2030, water companies will be delivering record levels of investment. This includes South West Water delivering £764 million of investment to reduce storm overflow spills and £55 million to install real-time monitors at high-priority sites.
Ofwat will hold water companies to account for the decisions set at the Price Review. Ofwat's claw back mechanism ensures that funding for schemes not delivered is returned to customers, by reducing bills.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to require South West Water to (a) reinstate collaboration with Surfers Against Sewage and (b) provide real-time data to the Safer Seas and Rivers Service.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is important that the public have access to reliable information on storm overflow discharges. The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced a duty for water companies to publish data related to discharges from all emergency overflows within one hour of the discharge beginning. This matches the pre-existing duty for storm overflows, which was introduced on 01 January.
To support this, Water UK have launched a central hub that provides discharge data of every storm overflow in England on a single website.
As part of Price Review 2024 (PR24), which runs from 2025–2030, water companies will be delivering record levels of investment. This includes South West Water delivering £764 million of investment to reduce storm overflow spills and £55 million to install real-time monitors at high-priority sites.
Ofwat will hold water companies to account for the decisions set at the Price Review. Ofwat's claw back mechanism ensures that funding for schemes not delivered is returned to customers, by reducing bills.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will require South West Water to publish (a) sites receiving investment under the storm overflow programme, (b) timelines for that investment and (c) expected outcomes at each location.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
It is important that the public have access to reliable information on storm overflow discharges. The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced a duty for water companies to publish data related to discharges from all emergency overflows within one hour of the discharge beginning. This matches the pre-existing duty for storm overflows, which was introduced on 01 January.
To support this, Water UK have launched a central hub that provides discharge data of every storm overflow in England on a single website.
As part of Price Review 2024 (PR24), which runs from 2025–2030, water companies will be delivering record levels of investment. This includes South West Water delivering £764 million of investment to reduce storm overflow spills and £55 million to install real-time monitors at high-priority sites.
Ofwat will hold water companies to account for the decisions set at the Price Review. Ofwat's claw back mechanism ensures that funding for schemes not delivered is returned to customers, by reducing bills.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information his Department holds on the number of hours Natural England has spent providing advice to the Marine Management Organisation on marine licence applications in each of the last five years.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The table below shows data from Natural England’s Casework Tracker (CWT) for the number of recorded hours spent providing advice to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) from 2020-2025. Both calendar and financial year splits are included.
These data include some other types of MMO consultations as well as licenses which will require further analysis that has not been possible in the time available.
Marine MMO Consultations closed per year – Total Hours recorded on CWT:
Financial Year | 2020 - 21 | 2021 - 22 | 2022 - 23 | 2023 - 24 | 2024 - 25 |
Consultations Closed | 588 | 554 | 495 | 467 | 588 |
Total Hours Recorded | 3395 | 3353 | 3345 | 2605 | 3345 |
Calendar Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 (first half of year) |
Consultations Closed | 606 | 534 | 525 | 487 | 549 | 282 |
Total Hours Recorded | 3965 | 3325 | 3171 | 3121 | 3069 | 1510 |
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many marine licenses were determined by the Marine Management Organisation for (a) removal of abandoned vessels, (b) firework displays, (c) maintenance of bridges or cantilevered structures, (d) installation of eco moorings and (e) coastal and flood defence works in each of the last five years for which data is available.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Sub-part | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
(a) Removal of abandoned vessels | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
(b) firework displays | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
(c) maintenance of bridges or cantilevered structures | 14 | 13 | 24 | 22 | 22 | 10 |
(d) installation of eco moorings | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
(e) coastal and flood defence works in each of the last five years for which data is available | 19 | 23 | 48 | 32 | 31 | 16 |
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what information his Department holds on the number of hours the Environment Agency has spent providing advice to the Marine Management Organisation on marine licence applications in each of the last five years.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency (EA) uses Oracle Time and Labour (OTL) compliance recording to record against their various workstreams. There are many different OTL codes that record the type of advice provided to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) for marine licence advice, from pre-planning advice to advice on significant infrastructure.
The table below shows the number of recorded OTL hours that the EA have spent providing all types of marine licence advice to the MMO from 2020-2025
Year | Hours recorded |
2020-21 | 1359 |
2021-22 | 1103 |
2022-23 | 1150 |
2023-24 | 846 |
2024-25 | 1094.5 |
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much the Environment Agency has spent on (a) mitigation and (b) compensation for flood defence projects in each of the last three years.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The table below shows the amount that the Environment Agency has spent on compensation payments in financial years 2023-24 and 2022-23. This data is based on costs incurred that were classified within transactional data as compensation payments, so may not be fully complete. To establish how much of these costs have been incurred through flood defence projects would fall into disproportionate costs. Data for 2024-25 is not available.
Financial year | £ |
2023-24 | 947,159.61 |
2022-23 | 2,158,643.80 |
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much income the Marine Management Organisation have received from charges for (a) harbour revision orders and (b) harbour empowerment order applications in each of the last five years for which data is available.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Sub-part | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | Total |
(a) harbour revision order | 1,447.75 | 1,208.75 | 1,576.00 | 1,515.75 | 2,326.50 | 8,074.75 |
(b) harbour empowerment order | 50.00 | 59.25 | 208.50 | 185.00 | 4.25 | 507.00 * |
Total | 1,497.75 | 1,268.00 | 1,784.50 | 1,700.75 | 2,330.75 | 8,074.75 |
(a) harbour revision order | £24,000.00 | £20,000.00 | £44,000.00 | £74,319.00 | £46,737.00 | £209,056.00 |
(b) harbour empowerment order | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0 * |
Total | 24,000.00 | 20,000.00 | 44,000.00 | 74,319.00 | 46,737.00 | 209,056.00 |
(a) Band 2 | 4,309.25 | 4,590.50 | 5,114.50 | 4,548.25 | 5,211.75 | 23,774.25 |
(b) Band 3 | 9,624.50 | 11,339.00 | 10,264.00 | 9,861.25 | 13,275.50 | 54,364.25 |
Total | 13,933.75 | 15,929.50 | 15,378.50 | 14,409.50 | 18,487.25 | 78,138.50 |
* hours for the empowerment order, the fee was received in 2019 and was £4000.