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 make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a National Flood Resilience Centre.

The National Flood Response Centre (NFRC) was developed in response to the National Flood Resilience Review, after the flooding in the winter of 2015/16. The review recommended that the Government should establish a single national flood emergency operations room to improve shared situational awareness between Government departments during severe flooding events.

The strategic objectives for the NFRC are to develop and maintain shared situational awareness between departments, Devolved Administrations and agencies, optimise central government’s response to flooding and to support COBR, providing Ministers with accurate information and recommendations to address any challenges or decision points.

Typically, relevant Government departments and agencies move all or part of their crisis team and emergency operations to the NFRC when severe flooding has occurred or is expected. Where co-location is not possible then partners will be represented virtually. Recent use of the NFRC includes November 2019 (flooding in North England), February and March 2020 (Wales, West Mercia and Yorkshire) and in January 2021 it was scaled up virtually in response to Storm Christoph.