To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of provision to category 1 responders of assessments of critical infrastructure in their areas to enable them to assess vulnerability to flooding. (280480)

Arrangements were put in place in March 2008 to share information on critical national infrastructure with all local resilience forums (LRFs) in England. This information has been shared with LRFs to enable local risk assessment and generic planning, under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004); we will assess the results next year.

In the immediate future the natural hazards team is undertaking an assessment of the vulnerability of the critical national infrastructure to flooding and will be working with the relevant lead Government Departments, economic regulators and operators to reduce those vulnerabilities.