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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the capacity of the Environment Agency to meet demand at times of country-wide flooding.

The Environment Agency has numerous flood incident response roles that staff hold alongside their day jobs. Staff are regularly trained and exercised in these roles. Some of these roles are only activated during an incident and some are on standby all year round. The Environment Agency currently has over 4600 staff trained to perform these flood incident response roles.