Lord Chris smith, chair of the Environment Agency has said extreme weather is "the number one challenge facing the nation."

Lord Smith, whose quango came under fire at the beginning of the year when Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, standing in for Defra head Owen Paterson, criticised the Agency's work in the years before widespread flooding affected the South-West. Lord Smith bit back in February, stating that any shortcomings were the result of government cuts and cost-benefit conditions.   

Speaking in London, at the Water & Environment 2014 conference, organised by CIWEM (the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) last week, Lord Smith delivered a key note speech in which he outlined the importance of continued work to improve the UK's flood defences to enable the country to cope with future extreme weather. He said, "The climate will throw more at us in the future and we need to be even better prepared."

Drawing contrasts with the 2007 floods, in which more than 55,000 homes were flooded, Lord Smith stated that, while 7,000 homes were flooded in this winter's floods, over 1.4 million homes had been protected, along with 2,500 square kilometres of farmland. While floodwaters were rising earlier in the year, flood defences were concentrated on towns and villages; at the time EA officials said they had a duty to protect life and property over land.

Lord Smith said he was "extremely proud" of Environment Agency staff who had worked day and night, "often in challenging conditions", from December to February to run pumping stations, deploy defences, co-ordinate information for the emergency services, issue warnings and clear blockages from rivers.

The conference followed on from the wettest winter the UK has experienced in almost 250 years of record keeping, and just weeks after the IPCC's fifth working group released detailed findings on the expected impacts of climate change around the world.

Welcoming the additional £130 million and £140 million the Government has committed for repairs and additional maintenance, The EA chair added, "The Environment Agency working with communities and partners was key to increasing long-term resilience to flood risk. This approach is already having real benefits in the Calder Valley, where flash flooding in summer 2012 affected 900 households and 250 businesses and the Environment Agency, local authority and flood wardens are working to understand how collective data, information and intelligence can be combined with technology to provide the community with more time to prepare for flooding."

Environment Minister Dan Rogerson also spoke at the conference, to confirm Defra's support for a catchment-based approach to water management and to pay tribute to the professionals and volunteers who responded to this winter's floods. The Catchment-based approach was first mooted in 2011; the approach aims to shift decision making and action on water management to local stakeholders, in a bid to improve water quality and contribute towards meeting the UK's targets under the European Framework Directive.

In June last year the approach was rolled out, with 80 catchments making-up full geographic coverage of England.