The Agency is responsible for maintaining existing flood defence assets that it owns. Its modelling showed that it is best value for money to have 98% of its high consequence assets at required condition. Timely maintenance is important because if an asset fails it is then more expensive to repair.10 The Agency divides flood defence assets into high, medium and low consequence asset systems depending on the number of properties they work together to protect, with high consequence systems protecting the most properties. Flood risk management assets are assigned a condition grade on a scale from one to five using a visual asset inspection. Most of the Agency’s assets are set a target condition grade of 3 (Fair). ‘Below required condition’ means the asset is in condition 4 or 5, or below its target condition.11