Environment Agency prepares to invest £25m to boost flood warnings

The UK's Environment Agency is looking to plough up to £25m in an outsource deal to provide the public with multichannel access to extensive flood risk information and advice.

 

An online tender notice says the fully outsourced contact centre will include a live agent call centre and "interactive communication media," including interactive voice response, SMS and instant messaging.

 

The tender also says the live agent call centre network must be able to cope with call volumes that are similar to those provided by the emergency services, which can exceed 1,000 calls per hour. The outsourcing deal will last four years and be worth up to £25m.

 

In addition to the floodline service, the contact centre may also be made available to other government departments or contracting authorities to use to provide similar incident management and advice services that require call centre and multimedia communication provision.

 

The Agency recently tendered for a Water and Environment Management Framework, expected to cost £1bn, £48m of which would be spent on mapping, modelling and data services to enable flood and coastal risk management.