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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate his Department has made of the number of marine dredging applications that will be dealt with by the Marine Management Organisation using the online marine licensing system in 2014-15.

Since the beginning of 2014-15 the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has dealt with five 15 year marine licences for aggregate dredging.

For non-aggregate dredging Defra's Impact Assessment on exemptions and navigational dredging predicted 872 applications ranging from simple, routine and complex applications for 2014-15 (Ref: IA No DEFRA 1118 – The Marine Licensing (Exempted Activities) (Amendment) Order 2013). The actual annual number of applications being received so far is currently running at between 10-20% of the forecast.