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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her Department’s commitment to improve national flood forecasting, (a) what assessment she has made of the performance of the new flood warning system during Storm Claudia, (b) whether any delays or technical issues were recorded in the delivery of alerts to households, and (c) how the enhanced forecasting models developed by the Met Office and Environment Agency contributed to advance warning and local decision-making.

During Storm Claudia, the Environment Agency (EA) sent more than 130 flood warnings and 270 flood alerts. These reached people through text (315,000 messages), email (350,000), and automated calls (225,000). The Floodline recorded information service also handled about 1,500 calls.

During Storm Claudia, there were 28 messages delayed by up to 1.5 hours because of a technical problem in the system’s infrastructure. This issue was quickly fixed. These anomalies aside, the system coped well with its first national incident, successfully delivering approximately 890,000 messages to the public.

Enhanced flood-forecasting models, jointly developed by the Met Office and the EA, enabled early identification of emerging risks. Using ensemble rainfall forecasts, the Environment Agency produced national-level flood outlooks that were shared with all Category 1 and 2 responders and emergency services three days ahead of the event (13 November) through the daily Flood Guidance Statement.