The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is currently developing technology appraisal guidance on hybrid closed loop systems for managing blood glucose levels in type one diabetes, which considers their clinical and cost effectiveness.

Should NICE recommend Hybrid Closed Loop and issue eligibility criteria, NHS England will then work with integrated care boards to support meeting their commitments. Guidance indicates that the National Health Service must make sure it is available within the stated period, usually three months.

The significant rainfall event that occurred on 9 May in Somerset resulted in ‘flash flooding’ due to the intensity of rainfall that occurred in a very localised area, causing fluvial and surface water flooding.

In England the Environment Agency (EA) has the strategic overview for flood risk and managing the risk from main rivers, reservoirs and the sea, and lead local flood authorities are responsible for local flood risk management, covering the risk of flooding from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses.

The Government is acting to drive down flood risk from every angle. In March 2020 we announced a record £5.2 billion investment over six years in flood and coastal erosion schemes to better protect communities across England. Around half of the schemes funded by the programme will be delivered by the EA and half by other risk management authorities, such as lead local flood authorities. Schemes within this investment programme in the local area include: property flood resilience measures to be installed at residential properties in Isle Brewers, Nunney and Frome; pump replacements at the Huish, Long Load, Midleney & Westover, pumping stations; and safety repairs at West Moor Reservoir.

Following the 2021 flooding in Chard and Ilminster, the EA in collaboration with Somerset lead local flood authority has secured funding to undertake a number of strategic flood risk studies to identify longer term steps to better manage flood risk in these areas. This work is due to start this financial year.

Much of Somerset is below sea level and many of its rivers are raised above the ground, so it will always be at risk of coastal and fluvial flooding. In January 2023, the Environment Agency put in place the largest temporary pumping operation in its history on the Somerset Levels and Moors. In combination with the innovative way water was managed through the system, this meant that on this occasion, widespread flooding of property was avoided.

During the Spring, East Somerset has experienced some of the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the area. This has led to roads becoming unpassable, and in the case of the River Cam, around 100 houses flooding. In all cases, the flood protection measures performed as designed, but were overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of rainfall.

The above table shows the number of properties flooded during the last 10 years across both business and homes, and includes all sources of flooding – surface water, fluvial and coastal. The source of most of the data comes from Somerset Council report produced post flooding which is why the information is not split between homes and businesses. These reports are produced as part of the Flood & Water Management Act 2010. The reports from 2022 have not yet been published, although the Environment Agency are not aware of any properties flooding in Somerset during 2022.

For 2023 the Environment Agency estimated that 5 properties flooded in January and around 120 properties flooded in May, however they are working with Somerset Council to confirm exact numbers.

Somerset has seen significant investment in recent years and has benefitted from the formation of the Somerset Rivers Authority partnership. Over £80 million of investment since 2014 in flood risk interventions helps the Environment Agency better manage flooding. It allows the Environment Agency to take pre-emptive action to delay the onset of flooding, to evacuate the waters more effectively. Together this enables communities to be more resilient and to recover more rapidly from flooding. The below investment was delivered in 2014/15:

• £6m on dredging, financed by DEFRA, delivered by the Environment Agency
• £20m on raising roads and drainage improvements financed by Department of Transport delivered by Somerset County Council
• £20m on repairing flood damage to assets from Defra Flood defence grant-in-aid
• £13m on improvements to the Sowy and Kings Sedgemoor Drain from Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership
• £3.5m on Pumping station extra capacity and improvements at Aller and Westonzoyland
• £500k improvements to the Parrett and Tone hydraulic model.

The Environment Agency are continuing to invest in Somerset, this includes maintaining existing defences and also helping communities to adapt and become more resilient in the face of a changing climate. Ongoing investment includes:

• Bridgwater Tidal Barrier scheme – investment of over £128m – Operational barrier by 2026.
• Dunball Sluice refurbishment – total investment of around £3.6m. Delivery by 2024
• Pumping Station upgrades – Project to invest around £5.5m. Complete by 2025
• Reservoir improvement investment (public safety) – Investment Program of £19m – Delivery complete by 2027
• Taunton Strategic Flood Alleviation Improvements – Council have agreed £6m funding in 3 interventions:

1. River Tone left bank defence improvements, Frieze Hill to Town Bridge

2. Raising of Firepool lockgate and defences between the River Tone and the Bridgwater to Taunton Canal (TTC10)

3. Longrun Meadows - optimising flood water storage.

Communities in Ilminster, Chard and Minehead are also benefitting from recently approved investment to help reduce flood risk. The Environment Agency and Somerset Council have secured funding from the Frequently Flooded Allowance fund to carry out investigative studies on what future flood risk interventions are required.

The information is not held centrally.

We have supported, and will continue to support, apple and pear growers through multiple avenues. This includes establishing the seasonal worker visa route, the Independent Review of Labour Shortages in the Food Supply Chain, a review of automation in horticulture, and working across Government on energy support. Support for the development of new methods and technologies is available through the Farming Innovation Programme and help to improve environment sustainability and productivity can be sought through the Farming Investment Fund. Apple and pear growers can also benefit from our Environmental Land Management schemes.

The Government is accelerating the rollout of public EV charging infrastructure across the country by providing funding through the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS), the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund and the Rapid Charging Fund (RCF).

Two local authorities in Somerset have already received funding from the ORCS scheme:

• West Somerset and Taunton Council have received £136,000.
• Mendip District Council have received £322,500.

Other local authorities in this region are still able to apply to this fund.

The LEVI fund will support local authorities to work with industry and transform the availability of charging infrastructure for drivers without off-street parking. The RCF will future-proof the electrical capacity at strategic locations to support ultra-rapid charging on route.

OZEV also offers a range of grants to support home, workplace and destination charging. This includes the EV Chargepoint Grant for owner occupiers of flats, renters and landlords, as well as for businesses through the Workplace Charging Scheme.

As of November 2022, the average waiting time for gynaecology treatment across England was 15.4 weeks, a decrease of nearly 14% from the peak average waiting time in July 2020. Per working day activity levels for gynaecology treatment continue to recover and as of November 2022 were 108% of pre-covid levels. While we do not have specific data for Somerset, a huge amount of work is underway nationally to tackle gynaecology wait lists.

The National Health Service has published the ‘Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care’ which outlines how the NHS will bring down waiting times across all elective services including gynaecology and menstrual health. The plan commits to investing in the physical separation of routine care to protect planned services from emergency care pressures where possible. We are increasing capacity for gynaecological surgery to tackle waiting lists through our surgical hub and High Volume Low Complexity programme.

Some gynaecological services, such as menstrual health services, are predominantly provided by general practitioners (GPs) which remained open throughout the pandemic. The Government invested £520 million to improve access and expand GP capacity during the pandemic. This is on top of the £1.5 billion already announced in 2020 to create an additional 50 million GP appointments by 2024 by growing and diversifying the workforce which will help tackle the backlog for gynaecological services.

The Government continues to monitor the number of dental school places in England to ensure that the NHS has the necessary dental workforce to meet future demand.

The Department worked with NHSE and negotiated with the BDA on a package of improvements to the NHS dental systems which was announced on 19 July 2022. These improvements, which are supported by the sector will mean dentists are more fairly rewarded for the NHS care that they deliver, making NHS dentistry a more attractive place for dentists and their teams to work. The Department is now working with NHS England and the sector on longer-term improvements to NHS dentistry.

Health Education England (HEE) have undertaken a three-year Advancing Dental Care Review of education and training which they are now implementing through their Dental Education Reform Programme to improve recruitment and retention including in Somerset constituency.

The Government is implementing an ambitious programme of work, including the Social Housing Regulation Bill to improve the quality and regulation of social housing. This legislation aims to change landlord behaviour to focus on the needs of social housing tenants and ensure landlords are held to account for their performance

The Government has made funding available for social housing providers and local authorities to make energy efficiency upgrades, including for social housing through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. Somerset West and Taunton District Council are partners to a project that has received funding.

In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Somerton and Frome and in Somerset.

The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.

No specific assessment has been made. However, NHS England and the local clinical commissioning group are ensuring that safe, high quality services are commissioned to meet the needs of their residents.

The National Planning Policy Framework implemented a standard method for calculating local housing need in order to give a clear understanding of the minimum number of homes an area needs to plan for. The method provides a minimum number of homes, not a maximum, and does not provide a target. Authorities are expected to use it as the starting point in the process of planning for new homes. Once this has been established, local authorities will still need to consider the constraints they face locally, which could include nutrient pollution, to assess how many homes can be delivered in their area. If they cannot meet all their need then they should work collaboratively with neighbouring authorities to see if need would best be met elsewhere. At the end of this process the authority will finalise their housing target and this will be tested by planning inspectors for robustness.

The Government is working to tackle nutrients pollution. Together with DEFRA, we have set up a monthly Government task force involving Natural England and the Environment Agency to ensure a clear action plan is in place, focusing on solutions for both permitting housebuilding to resume while not compromising the condition of Protected Sites. Alongside this, we are continuing to support Local Planning Authorities through the work of the Planning Advisory Service.

The water environment faces multiple pressures, including from population growth and climate change. Improving our water environment will be challenging and requires a combined effort of government, industry, businesses and civil society. The Government and its agencies, including the Environment Agency, are taking action. We are committed to our goal of delivering clean and plentiful water, as set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

Defra and its agencies received a £1 billion increase in overall funding at the 2020 spending review so we can do more to tackle climate change and protect our environment for future generations. Discussions are underway about the allocation of funding through the upcoming spending review to support delivery of the government's environmental priorities.

In addition, from 2020 to 2025 water companies are investing £7.1 billion to protect and improve the water environment. This includes £600 million of additional funding for the environment enabled through the Government and regulators' Green Recovery scheme.

The Government is aware of the impact of phosphate and other pollutants on the degradation of waterbodies in Somerset and nationally. We are working closely with Natural England and the Environment Agency (EA) to provide the tools to address this problem. I have also been working with MHCLG on the nutrient pollution taskforce, which meets every four to six weeks, to ensure action is coordinated and joined up.

Regulations, including the Farming Rules for Water, are in place to protect the water environment from diffuse agricultural pollution.

We have increased agricultural inspections in Somerset and other affected areas to address phosphate pollution at source by recently allocating the EA an additional £1.2 million to significantly increase the number of inspectors visiting farmers. We have also escalated our efforts to help farmers take voluntary action beyond regulatory requirements to reduce water pollution by expanding the Catchment Sensitive Farming programme - jointly run by Natural England, EA and Defra - to operate across the whole of England.

We are increasing agricultural inspections in Somerset and other affected areas, which will help address phosphate pollution at source, by recently allocating the Environment Agency (EA) an additional £1.2 million to significantly increase the number of inspectors visiting farmers. We have also escalated our efforts to help farmers take voluntary action beyond regulatory requirements to reduce water pollution by expanding the Catchment Sensitive Farming programme - jointly run by Natural England, EA and Defra - to operate across the whole of England.

We do not collect information on the number of planning applications that are delayed or not approved due to the nutrient pollution issue, but this data may be held at a local level by Local Planning Authorities. As such as we have not made a direct assessment of the number of planning applications that have not been approved due to the nutrient pollution issue in the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar. The Government is working to tackle nutrients pollution. Together with DEFRA, we have set up a monthly Government task force involving Natural England and the Environment Agency to ensure a clear action plan is in place, focusing on solutions for both permitting housebuilding to resume while not compromising the condition of Protected Sites. Alongside this, we are continuing to support Local Planning Authorities through the work of the Planning Advisory Service.

There are a range of potential measures that can be deployed to reduce phosphorous discharge in the Somerset Levels and Moors catchment. Natural England and the Environment Agency are working with all the relevant parties, including local planning authorities (LPAs) and Wessex Water as well as landowners and developers to evaluate and implement the various options.

To prevent additional phosphorous loading from new development, mitigation measures such as wetland and woodland creation will need to demonstrate that they will be effective in the long term. It is clear from other catchments facing nutrient loading that they have a key role to play in removing nutrients, enabling nutrient-neutral development. Several mitigation schemes for specific developments have been assessed and approved and the LPAs in Somerset are developing a strategy to support wider rollout of these mitigation schemes. There will be significant further investment of up to £57 million over the next three years by Wessex Water to reduce phosphorous discharge from water treatment works.

In the farming sector there are many joint projects underway and more is likely to be needed. The current approach is to encourage the uptake of voluntary measures to reduce the amount of phosphorous entering the system, including Catchment Sensitive Farming. These include a focus on river and habitat improvements, better farming infrastructure, and enforcement by the Environment Agency where necessary.

I thank my hon. Friend for his local interest in taking action on climate change. I am pleased to say, as I mentioned earlier, that we have recently reopened the £10 million rural community energy fund. It has already supported over 150 rural communities, including through the installation of a solar capacity project in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Frome. We have also established five local energy hubs across the country, including in the south-west, providing support to local authorities that are planning green energy projects.