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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many (a) powered rescue boats, (b) non-powered rescue boats, (c) wading teams, (d) water incident managers, and (e) high volume pumps have been purchased by fire services in England through Government grants in each of the last 10 years.

We do not hold centrally the asset registers of individual Fire and Rescue Authorities. 46 High Volume Pumps were provided by 2016 to FRAs in England under the Home Office New Dimension Programme. Annual grants to support the national resilience HVP capability are paid to 38 authorities under the New Burdens arrangements. Some fire and rescue services have procured their own HVP to facilitate a local response.

The government maintains a national register of over 130 specialist flood rescue teams with associated equipment on standby to be deployed across the country to aid rescue efforts during a flood incident. This includes the voluntary sector and FRAs

When the register was set up in response to the Pitt Review (2008), Defra launched a one-off grant scheme of £2.5m to purchase new flood rescue boats, support the establishment of flood rescue teams and train tactical advisors.

In 2017/18, a total grant of £750,000 was provided to help maintain the assets on the register and for training.