As far as I have been told Defra has abandoned publication of the promised chalk stream recovery pack. A great shame for beleaguered chalk streams like the Ivel (above), the Lea, the Ver, the Darent, the Misbourne, the Cam, the Granta and dozens of other globally unique but over-abstracted and polluted rivers. Is the door open for a change of mind? I truly hope so.

That dogged river warrior Feargal Sharkey – who will no doubt be leading the river of people through London this weekend – repeatedly asked the last government after the fate of the chalk stream recovery pack that had been promised by then Minister Rebecca Pow. 

Twenty-one times he asked on Twitter what had happened to the document – Defra’s response to the recommendations in the CaBA chalk stream strategy – that the minister had said on the 15^th June 2023 would be published by the end of that year.

It wasn’t. (Not the minister’s fault, btw … see below)

But since the general election Feargal has stopped asking. Which is a great shame, because his tireless needling does resonate in government. And the pack is worth publishing.

I have to admit, it used to bother me that he once asked so often, because elsewhere Feargal has written that the CaBA chalk stream work is a waste of time. I felt it was a taunt, much that I also wanted him to keep chasing. I don’t agree with him. Our chalk stream work is not a waste of time. But here was Defra proving him at least partly right, and utterly failing to fulfil a promise. 

Feargal’s tweets and the lack of anything material suggested that the pack was a total fiction. 

But I knew it wasn’t a fiction … because I was helping Defra to write it. 

And by December, the date by which it had been promised, it was all but ready to rock. Feargal kept on asking and I kept on waiting for Defra to prove him wrong and publish the damn thing. But the promised chalk stream recovery pack has gone round and round in circles ever since, every component repeatedly sliding back to the bottom of the negotiation tree as staff are cycled from one place to the next.  

Following months of groundhog day delays, it has now been shelved. Defra told me there is now “no mandate”. 

I suspect their reluctance to publish might partly be because myself and the brilliant Ali Morse – water policy director at the Wildlife Trust and vice-chair of the CaBA chalk stream group – worked so hard to make the pack amount to something: we were nettlesome and pushy, for sure. But I like to think always in a positive way. 

There may also, of course, be an element of the new administration wanting no part of the old: after all the pack was promised by the Conservative minister Rebecca Pow. But I prefer to think not.

Anticipating a Labour victory in an upcoming election I went to see the Cambridge Labour MP Daniel Zeichner in December ’23, when the chalk stream recovery pack was all but ready, but was failing to find a publishing runway or clearance from the Defra conning tower. 

I must have had some notion that Defra officials might filibuster the thing for as long as they could. I had met Daniel at a chalk stream conference in Cambridge and I had a hunch that he would be an important figure in a new administration. I wanted to emphasise how important it was that our collective approach to chalk stream conservation should transcend party politics if we were to stand any chance of making progress. 

Nothing he said made me doubt his commitment to that truth. Apart from anything else, he knew Feargal would hold them to account. I hoped, even believed, that a Labour government would be as supportive of our work to improve chalk streams as the Conservatives had been. 

And much as it runs against the grain of the popular view, some Conservatives politicians, certainly Rebecca Pow, and the likes of Sir Charles Walker and Sir Oliver Heald (all gone from Parliament) were very supportive. As were MPs in other parties, of course: Sarah Green MP, for example. And members of the House of Lords, notably Viscount Trenchard and all those who spoke in favour of including chalk streams in the Levelling up and Regeneration Act. Chalk streams have cross-party support.

The delay in publishing the chalk stream recovery pack actually had nothing to do with the Minister, Rebecca Pow. She was committed and passionate about making a difference, and appeared as frustrated as I was at the procrastination. My reading is that Defra was focussed on one thing: ending the media onslaught about raw sewage discharges. And their policy-making – in spite of good words about chalk streams in the Plan for Water – appeared to be focussed on this single BIG issue.  

If my hunch is true then, ironically, the ferocity of the raw sewage campaign was undermining the possibility of progress in all the other areas where rivers are equally, if not more pressured. The raw sewage scandal gets easy media attention and of course that is what government then responds to.

Techie, nerdy stuff like perfectly legal discharges of phosphorus, which arguably do more damage in many vulnerable, headwater settings, are then ignored.

But we should not ignore the full range of ills that beset our streams.

Our chalk stream restoration strategy and Defra’s unpublished chalk stream recovery pack, were based on the interconnectedness of pressures on rivers. It’s so important to build this understanding into advocacy and ultimately into policy, because otherwise you get skewed action or unchallenged inaction and you waste money.

For example, the impact of sewage and other components of poor water quality are inextricably bound up with abstraction and the quality of the physical state of the river. In the case of abstraction, most obviously because abstraction reduces flows and thus drives up the concentration of nasties in the water. As well as water temperature which turbo-charges the activity of those nasties. 

More subtly these pressures are bound up because in many places (especially headwaters of chalk streams like the Lea and Lark) we abstract so much that our river flows become – in summer – entirely supported by sewage discharges! 

Alternative abstraction and water treatment arrangements could feasibly and cost-effectively provide the same amount of water to public supply and allow naturalised flows which would immeasurably improve water quality. 

But this will only ever be possible if people think around the policies in a three-dimensional way and do not get swayed by single-issue protest into chasing half-baked policy responses.

As Ali and I tried in vain to persuade Defra to create a policy and economic driver that would address phosphorus impacts from small works in upper catchments we were told that what would be happening (instead?) is legislation to enforce the highest technical standards on designated rivers. In other words, only the places that were already good would get any better.

Now the new government appears to have ditched the troublingly joined-up chalk stream recovery pack and vowed to jail water company bosses who break the law, a populist policy, but not necessarily an effective one.

Steve Reed has announced a review of the water industry but the terms of reference do not look auspicious. There’s no sign of the nationalisation that some so hope for, but instead talk of ‘trade-offs balancing affordability with service and clean water’: which is exactly what we’ve had since forever. Only, without the clean water.

The environment always picks up the bill.

So, we have “a march clean water” but we should also march for “more water” and “better habitat”.

In the time I have dealt with Defra over a chalk stream strategy instigated by Defra – or at least their minister – I must have interfaced with at least half-a-dozen individuals who were handed the chalk stream brief. They have all been very bright, committed and well intentioned. They have all learned quickly about the pressures and the whys and wherefores of the policy recommendations in the CaBA strategy. Then just as they are getting their feet under the desk, they have been moved on and another fresh face has appeared on the Teams screen. This makes progress quite challenging.

The last new face I met had been shoved to the fore to tell us the recovery pack had been shelved, but that instead the government would focus on chalk streams in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. In other words, as far as I could tell the new Labour government wanted to double down on the concept of privileging the privileged and abandon the chalk streams whose condition is most abject, in the suburbs and orbit of London, in the intensely farmed landscapes of East Anglia, and in ordinary towns like Dover, Driffield, Bridlington, Dorchester, Luton, Fakenham, King’s Lynn, Bury St Edmunds, which are the focus of so much concern. 

I hope everyone who reads this will think that is as misdirected as I do.

Knowing that I wasn’t speaking to the general and was therefore wasting my breath, I nevertheless pointed out that a central plank of the chalk stream strategy, signed up to by all parties, including the Environment Agency, Natural England, Defra and Ofwat and the water industry, was the urgent need for the protection of ALL chalk streams to match those few already well protected. 

The abandoned but oven-ready recovery pack addressed that protection through a range of commitments including time-bound goals for abstraction and phosphorus reduction bringing all chalk streams to good or high status by certain key dates. It also included undertakings to consider chalk streams irreplaceable habitats in planning law, to consider better practical measures to reduce run-off in improved farming rules for water, to include special consideration for chalk streams in national highways and local road network technical guidance, and in restrictions relating to septic tanks. 

Okay, so over time much of it became watered down by undertakings to review rather than to act. Frustrating but that’s the way these things work. And as statements of intent and clear support from government, it was still very much worthwhile.

Besides, when the pack wasn’t published before the election this became a golden opportunity for a new government, committed to the restoration of our rivers – as this one claims to be – to inject a bit more oomph and send it to the printers. 

I haven’t entirely given up hope however, because as I say, I’m not entirely convinced this decision – in as much as it is a decision, as opposed a slow and relatively silent abandonment – comes from the new government so much as the permanent department. In a recent debate on chalk streams Minister Emma Hardy was asked by Sarah Green MP when Defra would publish the chalk stream recovery pack. The minister didn’t entirely sound as if she’d been briefed about it. 

If only the minister had known it was ready to go, is a total no-brainer, could be made more impactful in a jiffy and would go down very well with all those people marching through London on Sunday.