‘Due to Environment Agency union members taking industrial action we have put contingency plans in place to maintain critical operations, including responding to flooding and other serious incidents.
As a result, flood alerts and warnings for communities and partners will be automated during periods of industrial action. This will mean we can continue to warn and inform partners and communities if we should not have enough duty officers to issue warnings.
We will use existing flood warning and forecasting systems to automatically send standardised flood warning message content for all existing coastal and fluvial flood warnings when required during periods of industrial action. This is a temporary solution to mitigate the risk to the public during periods of industrial action.
At present Flood Warning Automation is switched on until 09:00 Monday 26th December. It will then be switched on again at 17:00 Wednesday 28th December and off at 09:00 Friday 6th January. These timings are subject to change at short notice.
You will still receive a Flood Alert and Flood Warning however it may come earlier or later than it would do under the normal approach, and it will include less detail. As a community flood group you may wish to increase your monitoring of local watercourses during times of prolonged rainfall and look at what local triggers you could use to activate your flood plan. You will still be able to contact the Flood Warning Duty Officer on the number in your community flood plan.
Due to staff availability over the Christmas break please direct any questions or queries to:
Flood.resilience.eastanglia.cb@environment-agency.gov.uk ‘
Kind regards,
Flood Resilience Team