I have decided it is time to hand on the chair of the CaBA chalk stream group.

It is five years since I agreed to chair the then brand new CaBA chalk stream restoration group (CSRG). Five years is a good chunk of time to dedicate to something like this: long enough to get stuff done, short enough to remain fresh, focused and driven. But I have always thought that turnover of leadership in these kinds of roles is a good idea. It stops one from getting stale, and it brings in new ideas and new approaches. 

There can be no one better to take the reins than the exceptionally capable Ali Morse (above), who has been supporting me so brilliantly as vice-chair. Ali will be a brilliant chair. She is Water Policy Manager at the Wildlife Trusts and she also chairs Blueprint for Water. She has been vice-chair of the CaBA chalk group for the past two years, during which time I have relied heavily on her in-depth knowledge and thoughtful, pragmatic approach.

She will be very ably supported by Alison Matthews, who joined us last year as the CaBA chalk stream project manager and who has well and truly got her feet under the table organising our work and pushing ahead with our initiatives. 

They will make a great team.

As for me, I’m not going far or even really leaving the ship. I want to give Ali space to do her own thing, but I’ll be around to help wherever I can. 

I’m also looking forward to refocussing on campaigning for reducing abstraction in vulnerable chalk streams. This is kind of where I started, going back to 1995 and my very first campaign feature published in Trout & Salmon about the over abstraction of a small chalk stream in Dorset called the River Tarrant.

It is a measure of how this battle to protect chalk streams lies eternally uphill that the River Tarrant is still suffering. Over the past decade it has run dry in its lower reaches 9 years out of ten, whereas through the 1970s 80s and 90s it dried – as in trout-killingly bone dry – only twice. 

The pressure on our water resources is going only one way: we have to run just to stand still. 

So, what has the CaBA chalk stream initiative achieved, and has it been worth it?

Before CaBA there had been many other campaigns for chalk streams over the years and I was involved in several. It wasn’t for lack of protestations that chalk stream protection was scant. When we started compiling the CaBA chalk strategy I looked back at all that had been asked for in these campaigns and how much had been delivered (page 29 to 30 of the main CaBA Strategy, if you want to check). The answer was some things, but patchily. Flow targets, an Ofwat duty of care for the environment and a power to revoke abstraction licences were all significant, even if they didn’t actually appear to be making the hoped for difference.

It struck me that a weakness of these campaigns had been their unilateral nature, and that a strength of the CaBA project could be that it would have to involve agreement from all parties. In that sense it was a big achievement to publish, after a year of deliberation, a strategy that regulators, industry and eNGOs all signed up to. This strategy comprised 30+ recommendations that will, if we actually manage to deliver them, make a big difference to chalk stream protection and restoration.

That’s a big “if”. No one should make the mistake of wishing for some Damascene moment or even a moment in time when we get to say “our work is done”. It never will be. That patchy progress we had made before? That was all part of the achingly slow process of easing pressure on a far too seductive and easy source of water and receptor of pollution in the busiest of landscapes. As to the degree anything has been or will be delivered, we inch forwards.

We haven’t had “our big wish” of an unambiguous higher status of protection for chalk streams. But we have banked some components of what that would amount to.

In the planning regime, chalk streams have been singled out for protection in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, via the potential tool of Environmental Outcome Reports. These Reports are at the discretion of the Secretary of State and we wait – anxiously – to see if the government follows through and makes use of its new powers in the framing of an EOR for chalk streams. This commitment would have been in the (still missing-in-(in)action) chalk stream recovery pack.

We are still collectively pushing for amendments to the new planning and infrastructure bill.

In terms of water resources, the Environment Agency has responded to the relevant recommendation and reviewed and now adjusted the anomalous abstraction bensitivity banding (ABS) that had mistakenly been applied to many chalk streams.

Very significantly the Environment Agency has also raised the status of chalk streams over and above the current (baseline) scenario in the revised National Framework for Water Resources, by imposing higher targets for flow compliance in both the “intermediate” and the “full” scenarios. This is techie but it means that – providing the catchment partnerships push for these higher levels of ambition – water companies must now factor in significant reductions.

Even better, within the “full” scenario, discharges will be excluded from flow calculations in chalk streams headwaters. This goes towards answering our recommendation for reviewing assessment points and water boundaries and ensuring they reflect the actual condition of the stream. A problem well illustrated by the alleged “good” flow status of the frequently dry upper River Ivel. It is only good because the assessment point is downstream of a tributary and a sewage discharge.

Defra has also now designated all chalk streams catchments as water stressed, which at least enables – even if it doesn’t compel – the roll-out of water metering in all chalk regions.

As for the timetabled commitments to abstraction reduction, that was something I really hoped to get published as targets (my word) or goals (Defra’s word) in the Defra chalk stream recovery pack that never was.

In terms of water quality chalk streams were made “high priority sites” – alongside SSSIs and SACs – in the Defra Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan. This means that target-failing discharges must be addressed by 2035. That was very much a win. 

In recent months over 70 sewage works have been given phosphorus licence limits for the first time.

There are individual instances of success too. That plan the EA briefly had of revoking an abstraction reduction on the River Chess because of localised flooding issues? That was shelved amidst of storm of protest, not least the point we raised that abstraction licences are not granted to alleviate flooding. It is also fantastic to see that the sewage works at the head of the River Chess in Chesham is now operating to the highest technical standards of phosphorus stripping. 

Elsewhere we’ve made less progress.

We haven’t got far in our request to the government to more generally provide a policy incentive to water companies to target their legally required reductions in phosphorus discharges towards the ecologically fragile chalk stream headwaters. Literally everyone on the planet thinks this is a good idea and yet no one at Defra seems able or willing to make it happen.

We haven’t got far, either, in our request for better targeted “farming rules for chalk streams”. Another set of no-brainer suggestions – “smart” buffer-strips based on mapping of run-off risk and flow pathways –  that can’t quite see the light of day.

Finally, in terms of physical habitat restoration, I think we are making bigger strides. It’s less controversial, for a start. No one disagrees with the idea of restoring physical habitat. Through Flagship Projects and now Landscape Recovery, we have the opportunity to take on catchment-scale restoration and prove what a difference good physical habitat can make. The barriers here are funding, know-how and the consenting process. All these are nuts that can be and should be cracked.

The Defra chalk stream recovery pack would have been an important mark in the sand. I am very sad that we didn’t quite get it published before the election and frustrated that the new administration has buried it for what feels like party political reasons. Their response to the chalk stream petition contained warm words, but no explanation for why a policy document that took almost a year to negotiate was dropped.

Having said that, I have a feeling and a hope that we may see much of what was in it, or even what should have been in it, over the next few years. Minister Emma Hardy and the new chalk streams lead at Defra both seem genuinely committed and positive. Their hands may be tied by funding restrictions, but I believe there is a lot the government can do that picks off low hanging fruit. I will write about that and the Chalk Stream Recovery Pack that never was in my next post.

There is much, therefore, for Ali to get her teeth into. I am sure she is just the right person to work with Defra and others to eke out more concessions, in favour of chalk streams. That’s how it happens: one stitch at a time.

Thanks everyone for all the support over the last five years. Onwards …