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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent progress has been made by the Environment Agency on (a) inspecting and (b) repairing assets affected by the 2019 winter floods.

The Environment Agency (EA) has carried out approximately 20,000 post-incident inspections following the flooding events in November 2019 and February 2020. These inspections are now complete and the results have been used to plan projects for the EA’s recovery programme that will deliver asset repairs. The EA is finalising submissions but expects to have approximately 600 projects across England. To date, 51 projects have been completed and the EA is commissioning its supply chain and planning the delivery of the rest of the programme. It is expected that all assets will be restored by the end of October 2020, or the EA will have sufficient temporary measures in place to mitigate risks to communities while works complete over winter.