Environment Agency responds to major flooding across the South West including Wiltshire and Swindon

The Environment Agency dealt with a major flooding incident in January 2023 that affected areas across the South West, including Wiltshire and Swindon, according to an account published by Wiltshire & Swindon Prepared, the local resilience partnership. The Agency is a Category One responder, a role it describes as a big part of its work during incidents¹.

The account sets out what the Agency did at each stage. Before an incident, staff check and maintain personal equipment and large-scale engineering equipment such as pumps and machinery that could be deployed. During a live incident, the team carries out warning and informing duties with local communities, works with Local Resilience Forum partners, and can deploy pumps, barriers and other equipment on the ground to minimise impacts. After the response ends, work continues: supporting partners to help communities return to normal, continuing or commissioning engineering works, helping return the environment to its original state, and supporting enforcement or prosecution where relevant¹.

For the January 2023 incident, the Agency says it worked to warn affected communities of potential or actual flooding as soon as possible, and deployed staff and equipment such as pumps across the region to give communities additional time to carry out protective works on their properties. Staff were also deployed to help understand the scale of what was being dealt with, and experts worked internally and with partners to establish where and what the likely impacts would be. The Agency says it is now undertaking extensive recovery efforts to keep communities as protected as possible from future impacts¹.

The account gives no figures for the number of properties flooded, people affected, or pumps deployed, and does not name individual towns or rivers. It also gives no dates within January 2023 for when flooding peaked or when warnings were issued. Those details have not been reported in the account.

Why it matters for households

The account describes the practical sequence households in flooded areas experience: warnings of potential or actual flooding, pumps and other equipment deployed to buy time for protective works on properties, and a recovery phase that continues after the immediate response ends. It also sets out where responsibility sits. The Environment Agency is a Category One responder, working alongside Local Resilience Forum partners, and its staff carry out warning and informing duties so that residents are aware of current situations and potential impacts¹. Which organisation leads on different aspects of flood risk, including councils and water companies, is set out in our guide to who manages flood risk. General household preparation for flooding is covered in our flooding guide, and equipment such as sump and submersible pumps is described in our guide to sump pumps and submersible water pumps.

What happens next

The Agency says it is focusing on preparation for coastal flooding incidents, which it notes are unlikely to affect Wiltshire and Swindon soon, and is running internal and external workshops with partners to test incident response procedures and make improvements ahead of future coastal flood events. It also delivers training internally all year round across all incident roles¹. No dates for these workshops or for the completion of recovery work have been reported.