Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications for bathing water status have been (a) made, (b) granted, (c) and (d) pending decision since 1 January 2023.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has received 30 bathing water applications since 1 January 2023. All applications are currently being assessed by Defra officials against the eligibility criteria and evidence requirements set out in the bathing waters application guidance, which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bathing-waters-apply-to-designate-or-de-designate.
In addition, Defra designated four sites as bathing waters in 2023, although the applications for these sites were received in 2022. These four sites were:
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many staff have been employed by the Environment Agency for each year since 2015.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
| |
Year | Total |
2014/15 | 10235 |
2015/16 | 10340 |
2016/17 | 10896 |
2017/18 | 10006 |
2018/19 | 10429 |
2019/20 | 10790 |
2020/21 | 10586 |
2021/22 | 10924 |
2022/23 | 12368 |
Dec-23 | 13282 |
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 publish a list of areas which lack (a) local authority resources and (b) private sector contributions to manage flood risk.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is investing a record £5.2 billion between 2021 and 2027 in flood and coastal erosion schemes to better protect communities across England. Local authorities, which deliver some of these schemes, benefit from this investment.
Local authorities are also resourced to fulfil their statutory duties and have access to a range of revenue streams including the Local Government Finance Settlement. The local government finance settlement for 2024-25 will make available over £64.7 billion next year, an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £4.5 billion or 7.5% in cash terms on 2023-24. The Government announced an additional £3 million in grant funding for 2024/25 to support local authorities severely impacted by the increase in levies from internal drainage boards. The majority of local government funding is un-ringfenced, recognising that local authorities are best placed to decide how to meet the major service pressures in their local areas.
The Government is conducting an assessment of local flood and coastal risk compared to local authority spend. This work is ongoing and is expected to conclude by March 2024.
The Government’s £5.2 billion investment is distributed across the country where the risk is highest and the benefits are greatest. Around 60% of flood and coastal erosion projects are fully funded by this investment. Where the full costs of the project are not covered, contributions are needed from partners, the local community and other organisations. This provides a fair and consistent approach for allocating GiA and securing wider benefits where others stand to benefit from a defence scheme.
As of June 2023, the current capital programme had already secured £128 million in private sector contributions – more than double the £55 million secured across the whole of the previous six-year programme (2015 to 2021).
Government has also provided additional funding to schemes which meet specific objectives, to ensure that they can progress. For example, 23 projects have benefitted from additional government investment, on top of the £5.2 billion programme, through the £170 million Economic Recovery Funding announced in 2020.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many times each water company breached their storm overflow permits in 2023.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency will publish the 2023 Event Duration Monitoring data for storm overflows in March 2024.
The data for previous years is available here: Event Duration Monitoring - Storm Overflows - Annual Returns - data.gov.uk.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 help support the mental health of farmers during the transition from the Basic Payment Scheme to the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is introducing ambitious new schemes for farmers and land managers in England, which will help their businesses become more productive and sustainable by rewarding them for farming in a way that will deliver environmental and animal welfare outcomes. We are also reforming the way we regulate, with greater emphasis on advice and improvement, so farmers and regulators work together to improve the countryside.
We are providing support during the early years of the transition via the Future Farming Resilience Fund. One of the key required outcomes for the Resilience Fund is that farmers’ mental health and wellbeing are supported. Some delivery providers are offering this support from in-house experts and others are signposting support available from external expert services. We have worked with the Yellow Wellies charity, to provide advice and information on how to identify potential mental health issues and provide tools for addressing them.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 19 December 2023 to Question 5961 on Agriculture: Floods, how many farmers have been awarded grants to install property flood resilience measures in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs does not have data on how many farmers were awarded grants under the Property Flood Resilience repair grant scheme. Farmers are entitled to apply for support under this scheme as either householders or businesses, depending on the property impacted. We can however provide a breakdown of grants provided by households and businesses:
There are two schemes which have run in recent years, not including the currently active Storm Babet (Oct 23) and Storm Henk (Jan 24) schemes.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 28 December 2023 to Question 5955 on Agriculture: Flood Control, how many countryside stewardship grants have been awarded to farmers since 5 January 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There are currently around 35,000 live Countryside Stewardship agreements. Of these, 8,200 new agreements started in 2023 and 8,600 agreements are starting in 2024. Actions to help with flood control measures are worth around £4.02 million in live agreements.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 increase payment rates for the (a) Higher Level Stewardship and (b) Upland Entry Level Stewardship schemes.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We do not have plans to update prices for Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) or Upland Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) agreements. This is because these agreements are made on a whole farm basis and payments work differently in those schemes.
From the 1st of January 2023 we made it possible for customers in HLS leave their agreements early, without recovery of payments, and enter another land management scheme and we will continue to support these moves. The new scheme must be of equivalent or greater environmental value than the HLS component of their existing agreement. Agreement holders can also apply for a Countryside Stewardship, Sustainable Farming Incentive and/or a Landscape Recovery agreement for any land that does not already contain a HLS option, they can be next to each other but must not overlap.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
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 introduce 10 year sustainable farming incentive agreements.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Our aim is for the Sustainable Farming incentive (SFI) to enable as many farmers as possible to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices that support farm productivity whilst protecting and enhancing the natural environment. These include actions that focus on improving management of soils and nutrients. The 3-year agreement term in SFI supports this aim, building on recommendations from farming organisations and tenant farmers (including feedback from the Rock Review). Longer term 5- or 10-year agreements are also available in Countryside Stewardship for specific actions, to manage, restore or create important habitats like grassland or in coastal areas.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent in sustainable farming incentive payments excluding pilot schemes in the financial year 2022-2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The accounting treatment for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) means that spend on agreements that started in 2022/2023 falls under 2023/2024 budget. There is therefore no SFI spend recorded for financial year 2022/2023.