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The Environment Agency has welcomed the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report on Flooding, which highlighted a number of issues to help continue and improve flood risk management in the future.
Barbara Young, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, said:
“We welcome the EFRA committee’s Flooding report – it’s a useful analysis and highlights a number of issues that we have identified in our internal review of the summer floods as priorities for Government, the Environment Agency, local authorities and other bodies.
“We agree with the committee’s report that there’s a real need for the Environment Agency in England to be given a clear overview role for urban flooding from all sources, and in a position to provide guidance and advice to local authorities, so they can lead on managing surface water flood risk at a local level.
“The report also rightly highlights the need for the Environment Agency to continue to focus resources on building and maintaining river and coastal flood defences. We saw during the summer floods that these assets performed extremely well and protected more than 100,000 homes and businesses in many areas.
“The summer's floods tested the Environment Agency, but there’s no doubt that we have come through better equipped to deal with future events and tackle the challenging impacts of climate change.
“The committee’s findings are also broadly aligned with Sir Michael Pitt’s interim review, and since being published in December, we have been working on the review’s most urgent recommendations that require action by us, such as a move to automatically receive flood warnings from us, rather than an opt-in approach.”
Barbara Young said overall, the EFRA committee had produced a positive report that would feed into Sir Michael Pitt’s recommendations, and the Environment Agency looked forward to the final review from Sir Michael Pitt being completed in the summer.
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