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 limited extended validity were made to the Environment Agency in each year since 2016; and how many were yet to be processed by year of application as of 25 March 2023.

No application is necessary for Limited Extended Validity (LEV) and the Environment Agency does not grant LEV. By operation of the law, LEV is automatic when a time-limited water abstraction licence is due to expire, an application to renew has been made at least three months before the expiry, and the Environment Agency cannot complete the determination before the expiry date. LEV allows the licence holder to continue to abstract water under the terms of the original licence until the renewal application is determined.

As of 25 March 2023, there were 122 Water Resources licences subject to ongoing time-limited licence renewal applications where LEV has been applied. Please note that this information is not routinely retained within the Environment Agency’s data systems and therefore this figure should be used with a degree of caution. The Environment Agency does not retain a record of applications where LEV has been applied each year once renewal applications have been determined. The number of licences subject to ongoing LEV varies continuously throughout the annual renewals cycle as the Environment Agency grant/refuse applications, particularly at this stage of the cycle as the majority of time limited licences have an end date of 31 March. For those applications that the Environment Agency has not determined, LEV becomes effective once the licence expires.