§ Ms KinghamTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many staff were employed on the Environment Agency's Floodline programme during the period October to December 2000. [145472]
§ Mr. MorleyThe Floodline service is operated at a BT call centre where callers can either listen to pre-recorded information or speak to a live operator. Calls are initially taken by a BT operator who will try to respond to the call. If this is not possible, or if the call relates to a particular flooding emergency, they will refer the caller to the relevant Environment Agency office (to which there is a 24-hour link for emergencies).
The call centre is normally staffed with up to 10 positions, but during the recent flooding that number was increased to 20 operators with a total of 42 trained to cover the whole day's shift (8 am to 12 am). The agency 598W estimates that some 5,000 hours were spent by BT call centre staff on Floodline during the period October to December 2000.
The agency's offices receiving calls from Floodline, or direct from the public, will have been staffed at variable levels during the flooding period. Some staff would have been dedicated to dealing with such calls, others would have combined this with other work. In total the agency estimates that its staff spent some 8,200 hours on Floodline work during October to December 2000.
Floodline received a total of 689,838 calls during the same three month period. This compares to some 102,000 calls in the first year of the service's operation.
The operation of Floodline will be included in the "lessons learned" report that the agency will be producing on the flooding.