Environment Agency chair Emma Howard Boyd has pledged "to build climate resilience into everything we do", as she hit back at reports suggesting the organisation could be forced into scaling down its flood protection efforts in future as climate impacts intensify.

In a letter in The Telegraph today, Howard Boyd defended the Environment Agency's (EA) response to devastating floods across the UK in recent weeks in the wake of Storms Ciara and Dennis, which she said had led to "record-breaking river levels" across many parts of the country.

Hundreds of EA flood warnings remain in place, with further storms and heavy rain expected later this week across parts of the North of England and Scotland still reeling from intense rainfall that has left homes, businesses, and infrastructure underwater and led to at least five deaths.

The government has faced criticism over its response to the crisis and cuts to flood defence investment over the past decade, but Howard Boyd stressed Environment Agency staff had "worked round the clock" to protect over 85,000 properties from severe weather this winter, with over 1,000 staff responding to Storm Dennis alone.

She sought to downplay fears the EA would no longer look to protect homeowners from flooding, pointing out that the Agency had built defences to better protect 200,000 properties in England over the past five years. But she explained that with severe weather likely to intensify as the climate changes, flood defences alone would not be enough to protect homes, and called for a greater focus on building greater resilience to weather and climate impacts across the country.

"The nature of extreme weather like this means that flood defences cannot prevent flooding everywhere, all of the time," she wrote. It is likely that we will see similar events, in more places across the country, due to climate change."

She said the EA's forthcoming National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England, which is due to be published in the Spring, would look to address these challenges, with a key focus on boosting resilience to flooding and coastal change.

"We need to build climate resilience into everything we do, whether by avoiding inappropriate development in the floodplain, working with nature to slow the flow of water or building homes, businesses and infrastructure to be more flood-resilient," Boyd added.

Her letter comes in response to reports on Monday that the strategy would include a radically different approach to flood risk. A draft version of the document reportedly recommends a "different philosophy" of "accepting that some areas will flood and erode and enabling local areas to achieve a managed transition", according to The Telegraph.

"We need to move from the concept of protection to resilience - property owners should be encouraged to build back better after a flood. This could involve home improvements such as raised electrics, hard flooring and flood doors," the draft document reportedly states. "Resilience includes accepting that in some places we can't eliminate all flooding and coastal change, and so we need to be better at adapting to living with the consequences."

The document suggests the shift in approach to floods and increasingly severe weather from the EA would look to ensure future investment in flooding projects "better reflect a range of climate change scenarios" while insurers could be incentivised to help those affected by floods "build back and in better places", the newspaper reported on Monday.

The mooted approach brought criticism from former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who building on his track record of questioning the seriousness of climate threats argued that climate change could be used as a "cop out" to justify a failure to protect homes. Critics were quick to note that during his time in charge of Defra Paterson had overseen budget cuts to the Environment Agency and was repeatedly accused of failing to sufficiently prioritise climate resilience measures.

The new strategy follows a report last year from the government's advisory body the Committee on Climate Change which warned the UK was worrying ill-prepared for worsening climate impacts such as floods and heatwaves, likening ramshackle preparations from the government to the sitcom Dad's Army.

In a statement yesterday, the EA said it was "already preparing for how we must increase out work in the face of climate change".

"These extremes of weather will become more common and we must start to prepare now, which is why responding to climate change is front and centre of our plans to make the nation resilient to flooding and coastal change to the year 2100," it said.