On Tuesday Defra announced that its National Flood Resilience Review will be chaired by senior Tory politician Oliver Letwin. The review was announced last month in the wake of Storm Desmond, the first in a series of severe storms that led to flooding across the north of England in December and early January.

The Review will assess how the country can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events. It will focus on four key areas:

• updating climate modelling and stress-testing the nation’s resilience to flood risk;
• assessing the resilience of important infrastructure like electricity substations;
• looking at temporary defences; and
• investigating future investment strategy.

The government has come under fire for its handling of the latest bout of extreme weather and flooding, though being questioned by Parliament’s Liaison Committee earlier this month Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that the relief effort in December was mobilised more quickly than in past flood events and that the Conservatives have increased flood spending. Labour MPs have pointed to experts who say that flood funding remains inadequate and questioned government spending figures (Shadow Environment Secretary Kerry McCarthy has said only a fraction of the funding promised to flood victims in the South-West in 2014 was ever received).

Discussing the recent floods in the Commons with her Conservative counterpart this month, Kerry McCarthy said she is “Yet to be convinced that the government is undertaking the complete rethink that the Environment Agency has said we need.”

Even so, following the announcement that he would be chairing the review, Oliver Lewin said, “This Government is strengthening our country’s flood defences, including spending £2.3bn over the next six years. This new review will make sure communities are as protected as they can be from the kind of extreme weather we saw last December.”

As the review was announced on Tuesday, Defra secretary Liz Truss commented, “We need to be sure we have the best possible plans in place for flood prevention and protection across the whole country. This Review will identify any gaps in our approach and pinpoint where our defences and modelling need strengthening, allowing us to take prompt action.”

Set for publication in the summer, and Defra officials said they will begin implementing the review’s findings in the autumn.