rangeley

Nationalisation-lite?

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026Posted in UncategorizedTagged environment, sustainability, uk-sewage, waterLeave a comment

Above: the Hogmsill chalk stream in south London spilling sewage in a light shower in 2007

Repatriation of ownership, public listing, long-term funding, transparency & accountability, independent regulation. It’s not rocket science.

Below is a three-minute summary of how that might work — and why the solution may lie somewhere between privatisation and nationalisation. Read beyond that for the full article.

The Water Industry Debate: A Short Version

Public anger over Britain’s polluted rivers has surged and campaigners are calling for the water industry to be nationalised. After decades of sewage spills and dividends flowing to investors, bringing water back into state control feels like justice.

But nationalisation alone will not necessarily clean our rivers. In the UK, pollution in Scotland and Northern Ireland—where water is publicly owned—are comparable to England and Wales. Across Europe, excellent water systems exist under a variety of ownership models. What the good versions share are long-term investment, governance, and strong regulation.

Britain’s sewage crisis is too deeply embedded to be sorted with a change of clothes. We inherited Victorian sewers that mix rainwater and wastewater, meaning rain regularly overwhelms the system and forces discharges into rivers. Add chronic under-investment (by government and private industry) going back 50+ years, population growth, urban paving, and patterns of heavier rainfall, and the pressure has only increased.

The other part of the failure is financial and regulatory. Water infrastructure requires large capital investment upfront that must be repaid slowly through bills. This should produce a stable, low-risk utility attractive to long-term investors. Instead opaque ownership and weak regulation allowed debt to balloon while infrastructure investment stagnated. Shareholder capital injections have been minimal, with most spending effectively directly funded by customers through their bills. Regulators focused solely on keeping prices low while environmental oversight weakened.

Nationalisation risks recreating the same problems. Two of the institutions that failed most visibly—Ofwat and the Environment Agency—are already public bodies. State ownership does not automatically deliver stronger accountability or better environmental outcomes. The lesson from countries with world-class water systems, such as the Netherlands, is that success depends on transparent governance, specialist institutions, stable long-term funding, and democratic accountability.

Rather than treating nationalisation as the only answer, we should focus on the structural weaknesses that allowed the crisis to develop. Reform could look something like this:

1. Compulsory public listing.

2. A re-patratration of ownership: 75% minimum domestic shareholders.

3. Clarity of corporate ownership / governance.

4. A financial and policy environment that encourages long-term, stable funding from sources that are sensitive to public opinion

5. A simple and easily comprehensible method of assessing and publicising relative environmental performance.

6. Functional specialisation: separating water supply from sewerage and water treatment.

7. Regulatory specialisation: discrete and independent bodies for standards, permitting, monitoring and enforcement.

8. Democratically accountable catchment authorities that are independent of central government.

9. Complete transparency and real-time data.

10. Formalised 3^rd sector and citizen science validation of standards.

Rivers do not care whether the water industry is owned by the state, by pension funds, or by listed companies. They respond only to whether sewage is treated properly, infrastructure is maintained, and the law is enforced. If we keep the debate focused on those outcomes, rather than on ideology, we might build a water system worthy of the landscapes it serves.

Nationalisation-lite – the longer version.

Taking its lead from last year’s hit drama Mr Bates Versus the Post Office, Channel 4’s Dirty Business has dramatised the malpractice of water companies and the incompetence of regulators, bringing public anger to a fever pitch.

From the town square— the X account of Hugh Grant, for example— comes the universal cry to ‘nationalise the water industry’. Nationalisation is, after all, what leading lights amongst the campaigners have been calling for. As Feargal Sharkey said to Toby Perkins MP, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, last summer 2025: ‘Right now, the vast majority of this industry, if not the whole industry, actually needs to be taken back into state control’.

Not nearly as prominent a voice as Mr Sharkey, I have nevertheless been campaigning for river health since the early 1990s. I co-authored the 2017 WWF report Flushed Away that helped bring this sewage scandal to a wider audience and stood with WWF’s brilliant Rose O’Neill and Kathy Hughes in a drafty corridor in Westminster, vainly trying to interest passing MPs. I should be delighted that a campaign once thought too esoteric for the public to care about (WWF hesitated over publication) has now hit the headlines. Finally, something might happen.

So, why do I feel uneasy about this war-cry of nationalisation as the answer? Reform UK has expressed support, and I suspect a more left-leaning Labour government might eventually do the same, particularly under pressure from the Greens. The current Labour government has taken state ownership off the table, for now, but you never know.

It’s not as if nationalisation would necessarily be the wrong answer long term, but quite apart from the fact that decisions like this shouldn’t be swayed by TV dramas, it feels in its current catch-cry form like too much of an easy, crowd-pleasing solution and one that won’t necessarily lead to cleaner rivers and seas.

Nationalisation has replicated and could very well again replicate the failings of the privatised system, under a different guise. Unaccountable corporate greed or unaccountable inefficiencies of state: take your pick. I’m more interested in the environmental outcome than thumbing the eye of capitalism: even if, in this case, the thumb may be deserved.

An equality of badness

There is mixed evidence, at least nationally, as to whether state-owned water industries lead to better environmental standards. True, beyond our shores the best countries for quality of wastewater treatment all feature various forms of municipal and state ownership. But here in the UK, where we appear constitutionally unable to run state entities as well as they do on the Continent, the pollution of our rivers and seas is as bad in Northern Ireland and Scotland (where water is state-owned) as it is in England and Wales.

Conversely, there is little evidence that private companies deliver better environmental standards either. This equality of badness may, in large part, boil down to cost. A clean environment is more expensive than a dirty one, no matter who is running the system. Over the last 50 years we have had underinvestment by the state followed by underinvestment by private companies. Is this because a world-class system would cost more than the British public is willing to pay? Has our industrial heritage driven too deep a wedge between people and their own landscape?

It can’t be an accident that the five best European countries for quality of wastewater services are motivated by the need to look after prominent and fragile ecosystems: Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria. Of course, England’s population density is much higher— 450 per square kilometre— than all of those other ‘good water’ nations, bar the Netherlands (441). Wales is comparable with Denmark (150 v 140), Scotland (70) is someway between Finland (18) and Denmark (109).

Arguably, none of the above rivals started from such a low base. In the UK, river water quality is actually much better now than it has been for several centuries, especially when it comes to poo. Rivers like the Mersey once clogged with islands of industrial filth. When the SS Alice sank in the Thames in 1878, it was the sewage-infested water that killed people.

Designed to pollute

Worse, in the UK we have inherited a water system that is pretty much designed to pollute: Bazelgette’s combined sewerage was a massive improvement relative to the squalor of the mid 19th century, but time has caught up with it. We have plugged our modern lifestyles and the Augean oceans of poo 70 million people produce onto the nation’s river network via a system of pipes that must be flushed through with rainwater to remain functional. To keep even vaguely on top of this, our sewage systems need to have massive overcapacity and then must also stay ahead of the relentless creep of urban sprawl, paving, house building, car parks, retail parks, and roads that send more and more rainwater down the drain. Not to mention the 13 million extra bottoms relative to when the water industry was privatised and the more intensive rainfall patterns of recent years.

Now you see it, now you don’t. Our ‘combined’ sewage system has a fundamental flaw, mixing rainwater with sewage.

It is clear that privatised or nationalised, our industry needs investment: firstly to become fit for purpose with its existing, flawed (combined rainwater and wastewater) plumbing network and masses more investment than that to become fit for the 21^st century. I wrote about a better system in my last blog: as far as possible we would take our rivers – certainly our most ecologically fragile rivers – off the supply and discharge network altogether. We would take the water in pipework to large, technically advanced treatment works close to the coast, with all the existing sewage works repurposed as stormwater storage tanks, like beads on a chain. This is all a long way off. For now we need to fix the holes in the roof. As we stand, water companies are looking to Ofwat to take the brakes off and provide a bit more investment through increased bills. Ofwat is looking to shareholders to fund their share. One option is unjust (in the historical context); the other is unlikely to happen.

But the fundamental idea of privatisation is not inherently wrong (nor nationalisation, for that matter), and need have nothing to do with the grottier ends of capitalism. Under any form of ownership, sewage infrastructure (if it is to be functional) requires a lot of capital, so much that it must be borrowed and the debt recouped over time through the bills charged to the beneficiaries of that infrastructure. The creditor (whether lending to the state, municipal utility or a private company) will therefore demand a reasonable dividend – they’re not going to invest for free – but they can at least be sure of a very reliable income stream, for people must use the loo in good times and bad.

I don’t see any way round that basic model. Either the government borrows the money and water infrastructure joins the queue behind all the other things the government must borrow money for (welfare, the NHS, education, policing, and defence). Or private companies, or some other institution, must borrow it. Independent funding is a feature of the exemplar publicly owned system I analyse below. A very large part of the protest against the current set-up in the UK is the apparent profiteering. However, a private entity can take various shapes and forms, can even be not-for-profit. Ideally to investors a water utility should look more like an income-yielding bond, rather than a geared-up cash cow.

Clearly, any set-up needs effective regulation, and clearly, our privatised industry didn’t get it. The problem was not so much the principle of privatisation but the way it was allowed through lack of effective regulation, environmental or financial, to metastasise into opaque financial wizardry.

How we got here.

The water industry was privatised in 1989. For a while, some extra investments were made: the shares floated at about £7 billion. Debt was written off and a green dowry added by the UK government to sweeten the deal. The infrastructure was in no great shape, and at the time, society had no real awareness of the degree to which releases of raw sewage were just part of what went on. In the 1980s, ‘Bocky Belly’ was an inevitable side-effect of swimming in the Frome downstream of Dorchester. I’m sure it was the same everywhere. People joked that you couldn’t drown in the Mersey, because you’d die from poisoning first.

Years later, it became clear that water companies really were routinely dumping raw sewage into rivers and seas (I took the photo at the head of the blog in 2007 and if you could smell it you’d gag), though still no one quite knew how much or how often. It was all just ‘flushed away’. In 2012, the much-unsung environmental hero Bob Latimer established through the European Courts(see para 7.) that according to the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive – to which we were signatories – raw sewage should not be released other than in ‘exceptional weather conditions’: very much contrary to what was happening on his local river, the Whitburn.

A short while later, Fish Legal won a ruling that compelled water companies to comply with Environmental Information Regulations, and on the heels of that, WWF’s Rose O’Neill sent a Freedom of Information request to every water company, asking for details of their raw sewage spills. From memory, only one answered because only one had any idea. At the time, only a handful of sites were monitored at all. However, research by the South East Rivers Trust showed that the outfalls on the River Hogsmill in South London were spilling far more frequently than they had been designed to. And into a fragile chalk stream at that, the site of John Everett Mills famous painting of Ophelia. The spills were not related to exceptional weather.

If only that had been the worst of it. It took dogged campaigners like Phil Hammond and Ash Smith (as portrayed in the Dirty Business drama) to push more persistently and unearth a nationwide scandal of environmental malpractice driven by financial malpractice.

As Flushed Away identified, water company investment had stalled: that’s assuming it had ever really started. I remember we calculated that at the existing levels of investment in 2015 it would have taken 800 years to upgrade the systems. Ofwat – the financial regulator – set the price of water and was determined that it wouldn’t go up. Shareholders added little extra capital over time. Caught between the regulated price and income-hungry shareholders, water companies sweated sewage infrastructure to breaking point and the environment paid the bill. Debt accrued but flowed sideways into the pockets of shareholders, many of them overseas institutions that – one might argue – had little interest in the UK’s environment.

Clearly, Ofwat failed to curb any of this. So long as the price to the consumer remained low, the feeling was – so one must guess – that the greater good was being served? Besides, Ofwat at the time had no environmental remit, only one of cost to the consumer. However, the Environment Agency, whose job it is to police the industry’s environmental standards, must also have been asleep at the wheel. Monitoring of river water quality, of fish and invertebrates, all fell from regular to infrequent to scant in the early 2010s. Prosecutions for pollution were rare. Water companies were left to mark their own homework. From the outside it looked as if the environmental regulator was compromised by the economic implications of applying the law.

No wonder it all went wrong. Now, almost everyone agrees that structural change is needed.

Structural change

The Water Special Measures Act is this government’s attempt to address some of those failings. A lot of store is being set by the potency of other eco-populist catch-cries: bonus bans and criminal liability. I don’t know how effective these will be. Do we really think that water-company chief executives set out to break the law? Sewage infrastructure is not fit for purpose because of a problem decades in the making, now colliding with a level of public awareness far higher than even a few years ago. In AMP8 Ofwat has allowed for an unprecedented level of investment, very largely paid for by increased bills and only time will tell to what extent this starts to address the problem. It is only the start, however.

Looking at where we are and where we go next, the Achilles heel of nationalisation as an alternative is surely that two of the three institutions responsible for this poor situation are public bodies already. If Ofwat and the EA failed in their parts, why should we expect a public water industry to per se do any better?

The fact is we have had nothing like the reasonable investment model that we might have, where shareholders look not for creaming profits but for a modest, steady yield, offset by minimal risk. Instead, as research has shown, we have had net zero investment, debt has ballooned, and the money spent on infrastructure has all come from customer bills. According to a 2024 analysis by David Hall from the University of Greenwich – refuted by Ofwat and the industry – shareholder investment has effectively amounted to zero in real and adjusted terms between 1990 and 2023. At the same time, debt has ballooned from effectively nothing (the companies were debt-free at privatisation) to around £70 billion today. The total spent on infrastructure has been about £190 billion, but where did the money come from? Mostly from bills, according to David Hall, while all the debt has allegedly gone to pay dividends.

The difference between fair and what we got

The difference between a fair model and the model we got must surely be the difference between the dividends owners have paid themselves and a fair dividend yield on the investments made.

Against the £190 billion invested in infrastructure, £70 billion is modestly inline with a fair yield, equating to roughly a 2% pa dividend. However, if the £190 billion mostly came from bills, and a much lower sum was invested – and it appears to be true that there have been few injections of fresh capital over time – that £70 billion of dividend, rather than being a reasonable yield on £190 billion of investment, is a very generous yield on the amount invested at floatation. A fair yield on the £7 billion would have amounted to between £9 and £16 billion. (2.5% – to 3.5% over 35 years).

Meanwhile, according to critics, the companies have been leveraged with debt and bills have been higher than they should have been, in spite of Ofwat’s determination to keep them low.

All of which suggests that the system needs rebuilding. And yet while nationalisation might stem the bleed of debt capital to overseas ‘investors,’ would a nationalised version be any better from an environmental point of view? Let’s not forget the problems privatisation was supposed to address: regional water authorities disinclined to prosecute themselves for polluting waterways, chronic underinvestment (by government), creaking infrastructure, deteriorating water quality (a 1985 River Water Quality survey found a high % of sewage works breaching their limits), and very little appetite by customers to pay more for their water and sewage. The full English one might say, since we are so very good at polluting rivers. Plus ça change.

A paucity of ideas

The replication of these problems, whether under private or public ownership, probably explains the vagaries in the public debate. Beyond the easy catch-cry of nationalisation, there are few ideas, with the exception of those coming from Dieter Helm.

Alistair Carmichael MP, chair of EFRA’s Commons select committee, was tellingly non-specific when quizzed by Toby Perkins MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. EFRA looked at ownership models to inform the Cunliffe report: the government had – at that time – ruled out state ownership. Nevertheless, said Carmichael, there is a fundamental truth that ‘you can have any model of ownership that you choose, but actually, if your industry as a whole has the wrong culture, if you lose focus on the customer service and environmental protection, then you’re always going to end up with bad outcomes.’

Instead of starting with the answer of ‘nationalisation’ and working backwards, we might do better to look at specifically what has gone wrong – a hurried privatisation that didn’t compel proper investment, opaque ownership regulations with no obvious accountability, a total failure of economic and environmental regulation, all built around a system of infrastructure that is conceptually flawed – and try to build a better answer from there. The clear evidence globally is that good environmental outcomes depend on satisfactory levels of investment, adequate regulation, and corporate governance, no matter how the water entity is owned.

Carmichael argued that regulation is what it boils down to, and many will agree with him. The regulator must keep the industry’s ‘feet to the fire,’ however the industry is constituted. Our regulatory system, Carmichael highlighted, is split between too many agencies and was not set up to cope with the labyrinthine financial structures the water companies fragmented into over time.

Hmmm. The single regional regulatory authorities that preceded privatisation had failed too. A 2020 Cambridge University Press study into drinking water standards found that public bodies commit significantly more treatment and contamination event violations and fewer reporting violations relative to private bodies, but also speculated that private bodies may exercise strategic underreporting. Which might lead one to the obvious conclusion that no matter what structure is set up, the regulatory side must be completely and effectively separate from the operational side and must not be captured by economics. Although the system has clearly failed, I have strong doubts that the state would have regulated itself any better.

In the UK, it has taken a third-sector form of inspection and regulation by protestors and NGOs to bring the issue to the fore. Any good system going forward must make room for a formal moderation by citizen scientists of the official marking system and the inclusion of that third-sector moderation in the regulation process.

Nevertheless, this economic capture is probably inevitable, to some degree, both of the state regulator and – surprisingly – the courts. In his book The River Pollution Dilemma in Victorian England: Nuisance Law versus Economic Efficiency, Leslie Rosenthal convincingly argues that in spite of the fact that British rivers have been protected back into the mists of time by Common Law and riparianism (the principle that owners of waterside property may make reasonable use of the water so long as that use does not inhibit the water’s quality and quantity for other users), a balance of convenience skewed towards economic efficiency and the greater common good has long overridden the common law in terms of practical application in the courts. Courts are unwilling, in other words, pedantically to apply the law if it causes economic harm (i.e. the cost of water going up) to a very large number of people, relative to the rights of a few.

It has made virtually no difference over time whether our rivers have been protected by riparianism, the 1876 River Pollution Prevention Act, the Prevention of Pollution Act of 1951, or the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. Economic efficiency will prevail, no matter how much a middle-class wild-swimmer or trout-angler (like me) may wish otherwise. Many critics insist that ‘we just need better enforcement,’ and they are not wrong, but the idea that courts alone can drive the levels of investment needed to build a world class system seems far-fetched.

Going Dutch?

So, what are the features of world-class water systems and how can we adapt them to our somewhat unique situation of inherited rust, too many bottoms, too much paving?

The Dutch system is widely regarded as among the best in the world. Drinking water is of a very high quality and is less expensive to the consumer than in the UK. Wastewater is treated to a very high standard too – 70% undergoes sophisticated tertiary treatment.

With the exception of the combined authority that serves Amsterdam (Waternet) the supply and treatment of drinking water is separated from the collection and management of sewer systems, which is in turn separated from the management of wastewater treatment plants. This allows for a high degree of specialisation.

Drinking water is supplied by regional non-profit and publicly owned utilities. Tariffs to the consumer cover costs, investment and maintenance.

Wastewater, on the other hand, is run under the Dutch water authority model, Waterschappen, comprising twenty-one decentralised public bodies (generally defined by geographical catchments) that form the main operational component of the water management system. Responsibilities include flood protection, water levels, water quality, and – critically – wastewater treatment.

Importantly, in terms of what we might learn, these regional boards are democratically accountable and are technically highly specialised and experienced. They are among the oldest democratic bodies in the country, originating in the 12^th century and have acquired expertise over the centuries. They levy their own taxes and also have access to long-term financing through the publicly owned Nederlandse Waterschapsbank (NWB Bank), which provides low-cost loans for public infrastructure. This financial autonomy ensures stable funding for long-term water management projects and supports the sustainable operation of the Dutch water governance system.

The cornerstones of the managerial system are, therefore: functional specialisation, decentralised governance, democratic legitimacy, and financial independence.

Regulation

That’s all very well, but who holds their feet to the fire? In the UK, Alistair Carmichael MP pointed to the ‘littered landscape’ of Ofwat, the Environment Agency, the Office of Environmental Protection, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, as part of the problem in holding the water industry to account. ‘You know, everybody’s got a bit of skin in the game, and then when things start to go wrong, it’s too easy for somebody to say, well, that’s not really our job, it’s theirs.’

Countering the Carmichael viewpoint, the Dutch system is radically decentralised with tiers of overlapping regulatory responsibility. Water boards must answer to the National Inspectorate (ILT), Provincial permitting authorities, the National Water Manager Rijkswaterstaat, scientific oversight (RIVT) , democratic elections, the courts, and effective public scrutiny.

Carmichael’s thoughts presaged those of government, however. In June last year the environment secretary Steve Reed announced that Ofwat would be abolished and a new super regulator would take over from Ofwat, the EA and the drinking water inspectorate. ‘A single, powerful regulator responsible for the entire water sector will stand firmly on the side of customers, investors and the environment and prevent the abuses of the past’.

The Dutch model suggests that overlapping or even split regulation was not the problem. Quite the contrary, it has been a strength. The problem in the UK is buried in the optimism of Steve Reed’s quote. A conflation of the interests of customers, investors and the environment is exactly what Ofwat and the EA got so wrong. The interests of customers, for example, are precariously balanced around the question of cost. A single, super regulator sounds very grand but at the coal-face it’s always a trade-off. Resolving these competing interests is not at all easy in theory, let alone practice. I’d place more faith in discrete and clearly defined areas of regulation with watertight barriers around any possibility of regulatory capture.

For a long time, for example, the thought was that a major barrier to progress in curtailing the over-abstraction of rivers, was the water company licence of right to abstract. What we needed, we all thought, was the ability to remove those licences when it is clear a stream is being damaged, without the need to compensate the water company. We now have that ability, but vanishingly few licences have been revoked. The burden of proof has now moved to slam-dunk, plank-in-the-face evidence of damage, beyond a dry riverbed and dead fish, mind, because a dry riverbed and dead fish might be down to natural causes. The EA has long been caught between protecting the environment and permitting activities that damage it. This is an impossible situation. So long as the EA is saddled with schizophrenic regulatory tasks it will struggle to do its job properly.

A super regulator may well struggle with the same issue of irreconcilable interests. And when it does, money will win, just as it does now.

Nationalisation-lite.

So, if and when the regulators fail to ‘hold feet to the fire,’ – which they will from time to time, even in a perfect world – we come back to the question of governance and accountability. Something that is so clearly transparent in the Netherlands. How directly publicly accountable are the ownership structures in the UK?

Not very much, is the answer. Only three out of nine (South-West Water, United Utilities, and Severn Trent) are publicly listed. The majority of the shares in each of these – 60% to 70% – are held by UK investors, mostly pension funds, insurance companies, and retail investors. These institutions, which will all have active Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) departments, should in theory be more sensitive to UK public opinion than the complex and opaque smorgasbord of private equity, foreign sovereign wealth funds, foreign pension funds, and asset management companies that own the other six water companies.

Does this difference in ownership structure translate across to differing levels of environmental performance? Maybe. Severn Trent was the only company with a top-of-the-class rating in 2024. However, Wessex Water appears to be the water company with the best environmental record over time, and yet it is majority-owned by the Malaysian infrastructure conglomerate YTL.

Even so, clarity and accountability could and should make a difference.

It is standard practice globally that companies of particular strategic importance to a nation – airlines, for example, telecommunications, energy – must have a minimum percentage of domestic ownership. Delta, American Airlines, Air Canada, and Qantas must all be owned by a minimum of 51% domestic shareholders. In Canada and Japan, foreign investment is limited to 20% of telecom operators. Both Canada and Australia edict that domestic pension funds must hold majority shareholdings in strategically important companies. The reasons are obvious but include security and economic sovereignty.

Why should water be any different? If all the water companies were by law publicly listed on the UK stock exchange, with a maximum foreign ownership capped at, say, 25%, it would surely lead to more clarity and therefore accountability in their governance. Even better if the financial system and policy environment strongly encouraged investors such as domestic pension funds to own large shares of this national infrastructure. Pension funds have long investment horizons, a need for steady income, and an ability to invest very large sums of money on fair terms. UK pension funds and their active ESG departments should be much more sensitive to public opinion than opaque overseas financial vehicles.

Especially if we could also create a clearer portrayal for customers of ownership associated with relative environmental performance. Why shouldn’t every water bill list who the primary shareholders of that company are? And, why shouldn’t every water bill include the environmental performance rating of that company over the previous one year and five?

The Environment Agency produces a star rating every five years. But few people know about it and it is a bit too esoteric for customers in my view. Customers need a little blue drop or a little brown drop. And they need this printed prominently at the top of the water bill alongside the company logos and a list of who the primary UK-based shareholders are. I can see the likes of Legal & General very much preferring to see their names printed under the blue drops, not the brown.

I have no idea how legally tricky it would be to mandate this public listing, to mandate a minimum % of UK ownership, and enact the policies that would encourage the right kind of investor. But I suspect it would be easier, and less expensive for the government than nationalising the industry and less likely to spook the markets, to use an overworked phrase. A system such as this would achieve a level of nationalisation-lite and powerfully add to our arsenal of regulation the leverage of corporate sensitivity to public opinion, curtailing the financial shenanigans and driving stronger environmental stewardship over time.

Ownership alone will not clean our rivers.

It is tempting, when a system fails so visibly, to reach for the most dramatic solution available. Nationalisation has the virtue of clarity and the emotional satisfaction of redress. After decades in which the public has watched sewage pour into rivers while dividends flowed out to investors, it is easy to see why the call resonates. However, the failures we are dealing with are systemic. They include poorly designed privatisation, unaccountable corporate ownership, and a regulatory regime tasked with divided and irreconcilable priorities, that was under-resourced and in places captured by the very economic constraints it was meant to police. Changing the ownership without fixing those structural weaknesses risks simply recreating the same problems in a different set of clothes.

What ultimately determines environmental outcomes is more practical: sustained investment, transparent governance, and regulators that are genuinely independent and empowered to enforce the law. Countries that succeed at managing water tend to combine these features regardless of whether their systems are public, private, or hybrid.

That is why a better path may well lie somewhere between the slogans. A system that makes ownership transparent, encourages long-term domestic ownership and investment, aligns shareholder incentives with environmental performance, and strengthens independent environmental regulation could deliver many of the benefits people associate with nationalisation without the financial and political upheaval of full state takeover.

Call it nationalisation-lite if you like.

1. Compulsory public listing.

2. A re-patratration of ownership: 75% minimum domestic shareholders.

3. Clarity of corporate ownership / governance.

4. A financial and policy environment that encourages long-term, stable funding from sources that are sensitive to public opinion

5. A simple and easily comprehensible method of assessing and publicising relative environmental performance.

6. Functional specialisation: separating water supply from sewerage and water treatment.

7. Regulatory specialisation: discrete and independent bodies for standards, permitting, monitoring and enforcement.

8. Democratically accountable catchment authorities that are independent of central government.

9. Complete transparency and real-time data.

10. Formalised 3^rd sector and citizen science validation of standards.

Above all, the debate should not become a proxy war over ideology. Rivers do not care whether the water industry is owned by the state, by pension funds, or by listed companies. They respond only to whether sewage is treated properly, infrastructure is maintained, and the law is enforced. If we keep our focus there — on the ecological outcome rather than the ownership model — we might build a water system worthy of the landscapes and people it serves.

The future of chalk streams, if only we’d grasp it

February 17, 2026February 18, 2026Posted in UncategorizedTagged climate-change, environment, nature, sustainability, water1 Comment

Back in the summer we received a letter from Defra and Minister Hardy about the government’s plans for chalk streams, after they abandoned the long-promised chalk streams recovery pack. I wrote about that letter HERE.

Twice recently I’ve been asked to summarise what could be done that would be ecologically effective and cost-effective. As ever, it’s the cost of protecting nature that sets the pace. The answer is no more than I have written about before, because the ideas were always cost-effective. But perhaps if I express it all as a very simple, rounded package that could be started immediately in at least one – if not two – major catchments: London’s Rivers Colne and Lea. It goes like this:

Re-naturalise flows by relocating abstraction

Take the chalk streams off the sewage discharge system and repurpose the small sewage works as stormwater storage

Re-meander the rivers, especially in public spaces, and in so doing boost biodiversity, flood management and carbon sequestration.

In my view this would be a total no-brainer and I can’t understand why we’re banging on about water company bosses doing jail time, when we could actually get on with fixing things.

Recovery of healthy flows

It starts with Chalk Streams First. A very simple and cost-effective way to re-naturalise flows in those very heavily abstracted chalk streams around London and Cambridge. Chalk Streams First relocates abstraction from upper catchment groundwater to lower catchment surface flow and allows the chalk stream first use of the water, all without a significant loss to public water supply. It’s chalk stream cake-ism.

An ongoing process called the National Framework (NF) has identified the deficits to good ecological flow in all of England’s rivers. The water companies, NF regional groups and Ofwat RAPID are developing multi-decadal strategies for water supply, security and environmental protection and restoration, including addressing those deficits to good flows. The smorgasbord of options at their disposal includes reservoirs, pipelines, desalination plants, recycling etc. We should see Chalk Streams First as another major one of these “strategic options”.

Conceptually, CSF, works by greatly reducing groundwater abstraction in the upper reaches of chalk streams. This leads to flow recovery, as the groundwater bounces back up. Generally speaking around 85% of the reduction recovers to the river as surface flow (some is lost as aquifer throughflow and some as evapotranspiration). This re-naturalises the flow in the chalk stream and the extra flow can be taken as surface abstraction much lower down the river system from the reaches where the ecology is less flow dependent. The water is then stored in reservoirs and piped to the places formerly supplied by the groundwater abstraction.

Dorset’s River Piddle is one shining example of what happens when flows are re-naturalised. This exact spot used to dry up regularly when abstraction was at its peak in the 1980s

There is a caveat: the flow recovery is not evenly spread through the year. It is much higher in winter, well over 100%, and commensurately lower in the summer. This leaves you with a summer shortfall, hence the need for a reservoir. In times of extreme drought, the flow recovery would be minimal and public supply threatened.

Ensuring public water supply in droughts

This is where you bring in the concept of a public supply groundwater back-up. Counter intuitively, it is during the drought that you draw on groundwater abstraction to make up the shortfall. Essentially you temporarily mine the aquifer (taking water from aquifer storage in the midst of the drought) and use the chalk streams as the means of delivery from the point of groundwater abstraction to the point of surface water abstraction. The scheme runs for just long enough to get you through the drought.

This actually protects the chalk streams with boosted flows in the drought, though this protection is a bi-product, not the purpose. It leads to slower aquifer recovery in the following winter and perhaps lower than normal flows the following year. In spite of that, the chalk streams flows throughout are still much better than they would be under our existing, chronic abstraction scenarios. A scheme like this already exists: the West Berkshire Groundwater Scheme run by Thames Water. It has been needed only a couple of times in the past 25 years and even then only briefly.

Essentially, Chalk Streams First allows us to re-naturalise flows in chalk streams without a significant loss to public water supply.

Using Chalk Streams First to solve our sewage crisis

Isaac Walton’s beloved River Lea doesn’t really exist upstream of Luton sewage works. Is there a future world where it meanders healthily through Leagrave Park, while the sewage is piped down the valley to much more technically advanced treatment works?

There’s ANOTHER dimension to the Chalk Streams First idea that has been unsung thus far, but which could be THE answer to the 24/7 inflow of nutrient rich and scantily treated sewage water to the upper reaches of our chalk streams from sewage works that are otherwise very expensive to upgrade. The brutal truth at the moment is that many to most of the chalk streams in heavily developed catchments actually need sewage discharges to meet flow targets. The Lea doesn’t really start life until the Luton works outfall. But re-naturalised flows driven by the aquifer would mean our streams are no longer dependent on sewage discharges for flow.

This will give us a solution to the thus far impossible issue of getting cost-effective phosphorus stripping to small-scale sewage works in the upper reaches of rivers. The water industry has actually done a lot to reduce phosphorus discharges, but the laws and incentives have been constructed in such a way as to drive all the investment to very large treatment works. The smaller works get left behind, even though they create the greatest problem in the most ecologically sensitive places.

Chalk Streams First means we could take our chalk streams off the water supply AND discharge circuit altogether. If we no longer need discharges for flow, the small sewage works that currently exist can all be connected and piped down the valley to larger works. Each STW that comes off-line as a treatment works can then be repurposed as storm storage facility, providing a series of buffers in the system.

If flows were re-naturalised we would no longer need sewage discharges to meet flow targets in our chalk stream headwaters and upper reaches. We could take our chalk streams off-line and treat all the water in larger works further down the valleys. Small sewage works could be re-purposed as stormwater storage areas, placing buffers in a daisy chain down the system.

Re-meander the streams, increase biodiversity and store carbon

Finally, you add to the above the comparatively cost effective physical restoration of streams that have been greatly modified over the centuries. Natural chalk stream floodplains are potentially vast carbon sinks, but we’ve dried them out and corralled our chalk streams into canalised straitjackets. I’ve just completed a raft of proposals along these lines for chalk streams in Norfolk and as part of that process reviewed the costs per mile of large-scale re-meandering and floodplain restoration. The numbers – £100 to £350K per mile – seem high, until you compare them to other numbers and reflect on the way in which restoration on this scale adds up to genuine and massive gains in biodiversity, natural flood management and carbon capture. By comparison, it costs well over £2 million to resource a 1-megalitre per day water supply.

Put those three measures together and you have the chalk streams of the future, once we get a government sensible enough to see the potential.

We live in hope.

This lovely image by photographer Charlie Hamilton-James is of a re-meandered chalk stream in Norfolk. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t roll out this sort of stream and floodplain recovery in public spaces and parks in the chalk landscapes all round the Chilterns and London, boosting biodiversity, flood resilience and carbon sequestration.

A debate in parliament on “protecting and restoring river habitats”

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026Posted in UncategorizedTagged chalk streams, protecting-rivers, restoring-rivers, river-healthLeave a comment

Pictured above: sewage? No. Road run-off from a mid-summer rain-shower.

You may remember Sophia’s petition for the protection of chalk streams, which quite easily surpassed the 10,000 signatories needed to elicit a letter from Defra, if not enough to trigger a debate in Parliament. However, a debate on river health was had recently (29th January) and chalk streams were mentioned several times.

The text of that debate can be found by clicking this LINK

I probably ought to let you all judge for yourselves what it amounts to or signals.

Personally, I have reservations about how easy it is now to dump blame on the water companies. Not that they don’t deserve a great deal of blame, but the parlous state of our rivers is not only down to water company malpractice. Our laws are at fault. Our regulation is at fault. Our pricing of water is at fault. Cheap food is at fault. Highways maintenance is at fault. Flea treatments are at fault. How much water we all use is at fault. Wet wipes are at fault. The ever increasing size of modern tractors is at fault. Our historic inheritance of mills, canalisation and dredging is at fault. The last three, historically the most remote, are in combination with all the above present day ills, the most significant impacts of all and yet receive virtually zero attention. Having said that, Minister Hardy, did at least extol the virtues of re-wriggling rivers.

Capping water company director’s bonuses might well be one in the eye for some of the folk who should be held to account, but I’m not sure it’s going to really do much to restore our beleaguered rivers more generally or chalk streams in particular.

For that we need some forensically focussed realignment of environmental law, economic drivers and regulation aimed not just at the water industry but at all the pressures that hold our rivers back.

There’s much in Minister Hardy’s final statement to indicate a general commitment to the above.

“Restoring the health of our rivers is fundamental to safeguarding nature, supporting resilient communities and securing our water environment for generations to come. The Labour Government are committed to delivering the most comprehensive programme of reform ever undertaken. It involves strengthening regulation, boosting enforcement, investing in innovation, supporting local partnerships and empowering farmers, land managers and water companies to play their part. From national action on agricultural pollution and chalk stream protections, to ambitious local projects in South Dorset, we are driving real, long-term improvements. Together, those measures demonstrate our unwavering commitment to cleaner water, thriving habitats and a healthier natural environment across England.”

The devil is in the detail, however, and in the end it comes down to that which can be quantified. How much less water will be abstracted from our chalk aquifers? By what date? How will we prioritise abstraction reduction so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the way we have prioritised phosphorus reduction (ie driven by economics rather than ecological benefit)? Where will the replacement water come from? Will we now, finally, incentivise phosphorus reduction from tiny sewage works in headwaters and tributaries? Exactly how will we do that? Will we persuade or incentivise farmers to adopt better ways to keep soil on their land? Exactly how? Will local authorities adopt less damaging practice in local road maintenance programmes? When by? Etc. Etc.

Specific actions. Specific numbers. Specific dates. These are the things we tried so very hard to get into a Chalk Stream Recovery Pack. Without them it’s all so much fish and chips wrapper.

Dumb, damaging and pointless drainage: one of the many things that impact chalk stream health.

A letter to Minister Hardy

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026Posted in UncategorizedTagged chalk streams, environmentLeave a comment

Ali Morse – chair of the CaBA chalk stream group – has written a letter (see PDF below) to Minister Emma Hardy (pictured above with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust beside the Foston Beck) encouraging her to support measures to restore and protect chalk streams, but also expressing disappointment that the water White Paper and NPPF have not given us the promised assurances that chalk streams will get the “recognition and protection they deserve.”

Some time before the last election – and sensing, without any great gifts of foresight, a change of government – I spoke with Daniel Zeichner, the Cambridge Labour MP, about how important it would be to continue our chalk stream restoration work beyond the election, to harness the momentum gained from a strategy that had been signed up to by all sides. I might have been naive (though not as naive as those firebrands who correlated conservation nirvana with a change at Westminster) but Zeichner agreed wholeheartedly. He said that Feargal Sharkey – who was vigorously campaigning for Labour at the time – would hold them all to account if they didn’t do something.

And yet in spite of all that, the responses of the new(ish) government to repeated pleas for the greater protection of chalk streams have been underwhelming, to say the least. Having filibustered the progress of Minister Pow’s promised Chalk Stream Recovery Pack, Defra used the election as a means to nudge the pesky document under the carpet and finally to bury it altogether.

But when I met Minister Hardy last summer on the banks of Yorkshire’s Foston Beck, I met someone who I felt was motivated – as Minister Pow had been – to help chalk streams. She seemed genuinely keen to listen and help. Genuinely flabbergasted by some of the anomalies in existing environmental law that, for example, drive ever more expensive sewage treatments to works where the benefit to wildlife is minimal, while ignoring those places that need it most. But I also sensed a hesitancy to commit. Having worked for a year with Defra trying to midwife the Recovery Pack I knew why. Trying to persuade that unelected part of government to do anything differently is like pushing water uphill, whether you’re a Minister, an eNGO or individual citizen.

As Ali points out in her excellent letter, during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill we saw consistent and strong cross-party support for measures to protect chalk streams. We heard ministerial assurances from the despatch box that effective chalk stream measures would be included in upcoming policies.

But we haven’t seen much of substance, thus far.

No surprise, perhaps. There is no Damascene moment in conservation. I’ve been banging on about chalk stream protection since the dark days of the late 1980s when abstraction was at its peak, when cattle poached the riverbanks to bits, when land drainage engineers ruled the waterways, when zero phosphorus was removed from sewage and when “restoration” of rivers was an eccentric form of guerrilla resistance. Things are better than that now, though sometimes it may not feels as if they are.

To that end, Ali has extended to Defra the hand of continuing cooperation backed by the wealth of expertise now assembled under the umbrella of the CaBA chalk stream group, very ably managed by Alison Matthews. And I have invited Minister Hardy to come and visit the River Chess to meet with the River Chess Association and the Chilterns Chalk Stream Project and see first hand how collaboration and persistence can bring about the recovery of a chalk stream.

Fingers crossed. As ever.

260204 Letter to Minister Hardy – Chalk Streams Download

Full text from the House of Lords debate ref the protection of chalk streams and the Bishop of Norwich’s amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

October 29, 2025October 29, 2025Posted in UncategorizedTagged chalk streams, environment, water1 Comment

Extracted from Hansard Report – Planning and Infrastructure Bill – Hansard – UK Parliament

Amendment 93

Moved by

Baroness Grender

93: Clause 52, page 73, line 22, at end insert—

“(6A) Where a strategy area includes a chalk stream, the spatial development strategy must include policies on permissible activities within the area of the stream for the purposes of preventing harm or damage to the stream or its surrounding area.”Member’s explanatory statement

This amendment would ensure spatial development strategies include policies to protect chalk streams.

Baroness Grender

My Lords, Amendment 93, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, aims to secure the future of England’s chalk streams by enshrining specific protections and standards into our planning regime. As we made clear in Committee, these globally rare ecosystems—there are only 200 in the world—are often referred to as our country’s rainforests in terms of biodiversity and they face genuine risk from piecemeal development and inadequate water management. These are risks that will only intensify without a robust and specific legislative lever.

Relatively recently, I went for a customary walk in a beautiful green space in south-west London, only to discover that the beautiful River Wandle, home to brown trout and kingfishers, had been destroyed by a devastating diesel leak. The Government intend to streamline housebuilding and environmental measures in tandem, but the practical reality is stark.

Chalk streams are uniquely vulnerable. Abstraction of water, chronic pollution and unchecked development have led to tangible declines in many local areas. In 2023, the Liberal Democrats collected data through freedom of information requests, which revealed that one in 10 chalk stream sewage monitors were faulty, with some water companies having much higher rates of broken or uninstalled equipment.

Amendment 93 delivers a targeted solution: a statutory driver for sustainable drainage standards before any development interfaces with public sewers, closing a loophole that currently exists and has allowed cumulative harm to chalk streams. This amendment would ensure that developers are compelled to apply national standards for drainage and water treatment ahead of any permissions, rather than leaving mitigation as an afterthought.

Amendment 94 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich complements this approach, and I thank him for the work he has done on this issue and his environmental expertise, which he has brought to this debate. Amendment 94 tightens oversight and demands full transparency in environmental impact reviews on watercourses at risk, an essential safeguard for communities whose local rivers are too often treated as collateral damage by the planning system’s inertia.

None of us should accept that cleaner, safer waterways are an optional extra and a nice to have. By adopting an amendment on chalk streams and supporting, out of these two amendments, Amendment 94, this House will signal that nature restoration, water quality and sustainable infrastructure are not in competition but can be advanced through co-ordinated and legally binding steps. I urge noble Lords to support these amendments for the sake of our streams and the communities they sustain.

If the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich moves to a vote, these Benches will support him. It is right that, with something as crucial as our unique chalk streams, we ask our colleagues in the House of Commons to think again and strengthen and protect in law this ecosystem that is almost unique to England. I hope that this House will unite in voting for Amendment 94 and protecting this rare heritage for future generations.

Amendment 94

The Lord Bishop of Norwich

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 94, and I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for their support. I am most grateful to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who has just spoken so powerfully about her amendment, as well as offering her support for this amendment. Amendment 94 would require a spatial development strategy to list chalk streams in the strategy area, outline measures to protect them from environmental harm and impose responsibility on strategic planning authorities to protect and enhance chalk stream environments.

Chalk streams, as we have heard, are a very special type of river. Some 85% of the world’s chalk streams are in England. They are fed primarily by spring water from the chalk aquifer, not rain, which means that they have clear, cold water and very stable flows. These globally rare habitats are found in a broad sweep from Yorkshire and the Lincolnshire Wolds through Norfolk, the Chilterns, Hampshire and Dorset. The Bure, Glaven, Wensum, Test, Itchen and Meon are river names that come to mind flowing, as they do, through the tapestry of English history and in our literature, such as the River Pang-based Wind in the Willows. They are rich in minerals, especially calcium, and this “base rich” environment supports a distinctive and rich ecology.

It is no wonder that this amendment and a similar one in the other place have received such positive support, including in your Lordships’ Committee. What it seeks to do is such an obvious thing, for what we love, we should desire to protect; what we value, we should safeguard; what is of global significance, we should be deeply proud of.

I am grateful that the Minister responded to my letter to her about my amendment. However, her response was far from reassuring in two ways. First, the Government have pointed to local nature recovery strategies as a way of protecting chalk streams. These could, of course, in future be capable of considering, avoiding and otherwise mitigating for direct damage to these habitats, such as occurs from the footprint of a development near a chalk stream. However, to do so, LNRSs will need more bite in the planning system than they currently have. We are still waiting for the regulations designed to do precisely that, placing a duty on local planning authorities to take account of the nature strategy when making planning decisions.

We are still waiting for that to be commenced, and it is now a full two years after these regulations were promised in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023.

Even once the regulations are passed, LNRSs will not be well placed to map, quantify and avoid or mitigate for the offsite impacts of development such as downstream pollution or the additional water that will be abstracted from chalk streams or their aquifers to serve new homes. These very real threats to our chalk streams, over areas much larger than are covered by strategies, cannot be addressed by LNRSs.

Secondly, the Government have pointed to their plans to limit overabstraction by water companies through amending licences, but their target achievement date is 2030. This could take far, far too long and be far, far too late for many threatened chalk streams. The current abstraction situation is grave. Water companies are not sourcing their water from chalk streams within sustainable limits. The Catchment Based Approach’s chalk streams annual review 2024-2—a mouthful of a title—published last week, reports that a third of chalk streams do not have healthy flow regimes. This CaBA report also highlights additional water bodies where, despite flows being classed as compliant overall, abstraction can cause significant local impacts in parts of the watercourse. For example, in the River Loddon, upstream areas are impacted by abstraction but, because of wastewater discharge downstream of them, flows at the assessment point are classed as compliant. If overabstraction occurs for a sustained period upstream, the whole chalk stream could well dry out.

In light of the growing and urgent challenges facing our chalk streams, we cannot afford to wait for LNRSs to have more planning bite, or for 2030, when the abstraction licence amendments come into effect. We need Amendment 94 so that spatial development strategies are equipped to enable planning authorities to direct development away from areas where development footprints, pollution and overabstraction could sound the death knell for declining chalk streams. I will certainly listen to the Minister’s response with care. However, if this amendment continues to secure wide support, I will look to test the opinion of the House.

Baroness Willis of Summertown

I am pleased to add my name to the important amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, and to Amendment 92 in this group, because, let us be honest, we are not starting from a good place with chalk streams. As mentioned by my noble friend, the current status of these unique and extremely rare habitats in the UK is poor, with more than three-quarters failing to meet good ecological health standards. This is precisely why the chalk streams became such an important issue for debate in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. I remember only too well the same Front Bench colleagues debating long and hard for their protection.

The chalk stream recovery plan, announced by the previous Government, was seen by many, including me, as a good step in the right direction. But here we are again, with chalk streams back in the firing line and, despite the reassurance from the Minister on Report that local nature recovery strategies could propose priorities for their protection, the problem with our planning system is that it requires local authorities only to have regard to our LNRSs, which is not strong enough to protect these vulnerable habitats. We came across this a number of times in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Those words are etched in my memory.

Also, although the NPPF recognises the importance of irreplaceable habitats, chalk streams, much to my alarm—and, I am sure, to that of many in this House—are not specifically listed as protected habitats. Therefore, they do not have the overarching level of protection in the Bill, through the spatial development strategies, in the same way other protected habitats do. The only hope left, therefore, is the chalk stream nature recovery plan, launched by the previous Government. However, in reply to the question on this asked in Committee by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who sadly cannot be here today, the Minister stated that even this is now on hold because it is out of step with the ambitious programme of water reforms proposed by the Government. Perhaps the Minister can say for how long it will be on hold, as a result permitting further damage to occur in these unique freshwater habitats.

I say this because time is of the essence here. As an ecologist, I went back to look at the literature. Research on chalk streams has demonstrated that while removing pollution can result in the improvement of water quality within a month to a few years, ecological recovery can take between 10 and 20 years. The more damage we do, the longer it will take for them to recover.

Lastly, surely there must be some no-go habitats in some of our river catchments, and these chalk streams should be one of them. I therefore urge the Minister to agree to this amendment, within which the spatial development strategy would mandate the sort of responsibilities that lead to the protection and enhancement of these unique and rare chalk stream habitats.

Lord Bellingham

My Lords, I support both amendments. I made a speech in Committee in which I laid out very similar arguments to those put by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. I will not repeat them now, except to say that the right reverend Prelate referred to a number of chalk streams in my old constituency of North West Norfolk. These incredible assets—these unique and precious assets—are at risk as we speak. I say to the Minister that neither amendment is particularly demanding. They are quite modest in their overall fabric and intent. If the Government are serious about their environmental credentials, and about trying to do something for the countryside, I urge them, please, to accept these amendments.

The Earl of Caithness

My Lords, I have put my name to the right reverend Prelate’s amendment. I am delighted to see him back in the Chamber; we missed him in Committee.

My noble friend Lord Roborough was absolutely right when he said in Committee that all rivers are important. Yes, that is true, but chalk streams are that bit more important. The reason for that is that we have 85% of the world’s chalk streams. We are custodians for that majority, but 83% of those chalk streams do not meet good ecological standards. We have handled the whole situation very badly. I think we have taken a retrograde step with this Government, who have dispensed with the chalk stream recovery pack, which the noble Baroness just referred to.

I have written to the Minister and told her that I will ask her a number of questions. I have given her forewarning, so I expect replies. In what respect did that chalk stream recovery pack fall short? It was nearly ready to go when the Labour Government took over after winning the election. They could have pressed the button; that chalk stream pack focused on some difficult questions that nobody had fully addressed before, so why have they torpedoed it? What do they propose to do that will be better than that pack had proposed?

Let us go down to some specifics of the pack. It had time-bound commitments to reduce groundwater abstraction on numerous chalk streams which, according to the Environment Agency’s own data, are unsustainably extracted: for example, the Darent in Kent, where over half the rainfall that feeds the river is taken away for public water supply. There was a timescale for getting that right. Will the Government stick with that timescale or will there be something longer? Do the Government have plans to move water abstraction further downstream, rather than at the headwaters of these rivers?

The chalk stream pack also had a timebound commitment to address the hundreds of small sewage works in chalk streams that do not remove phosphorus in the treatment process and where there is currently no policy or incentive to drive investment. What are the Government going to do better to give a good timescale to get all those water treatment plants in good order? The pack also addressed run-off from highways and local roads, which I have spoken about before in your Lordships’ House, and how damaging it can be to chalk streams in particular because of the added silt. The CaBA chalk stream strategy recommends revised best practice guidelines for local councils that give more protection to chalk streams. Do the Government have better plans than that? The pack also put forward solutions to reform the farming rules for water, which are currently ineffective. What are the Government going to do to replace that recommendation?

I did not mention this question when I wrote to the Minister, but I will add it now: how do the Government intend to address the physical dysfunctionality of many chalk streams moved, straightened, dredged or dammed over the centuries and put them back to their natural state? In destroying the hard work of some very good, able and committed people who produced the chalk stream pack, the Government have alienated some potential friends in their effort to improve the environment. How are they going to get friends back onside when, after all that work, they have just dismissed it as though it did not matter? What plans do they have to include such people in the future to try to improve the whole river system for chalk streams? It is no good taking just one little area in one district or county council, because chalk streams do not understand those borders; they flow through lot of different councils. The whole thing has to be tackled on a holistic basis, and the only way to do that is by supporting the right reverend Prelate’s amendment.

Lord Roborough

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I am grateful for their excellent, informative introductions. We on these Benches tabled similar amendments in Committee. The amendments share a vital purpose: to ensure that our planning system gives proper recognition and protection to chalk streams, one of our most distinct and rarest natural habitats. These streams help define our landscapes, support unique biodiversity and supply water to many communities. The amendments would require spatial development strategies to identify and protect chalk streams, setting out the responsibilities for planning authorities in their stewardship.

These are sensible, constructive proposals and I am grateful to those who have tabled and supported them. We will support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich if he divides on his amendment this evening. Will the Minister say whether she considers chalk streams to be irreplaceable habitats, like ancient woodlands, and therefore deserving of similar policy protection? The case for stronger recognition of chalk streams within our planning system is compelling. They are an irreplaceable part of our natural heritage and a globally important asset, and the way we plan for growth must reflect that.

I hope the Minister has heard the House and will be able to accept these amendments, and explain, as the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and my noble friend Lord Caithness have asked, why our chalk stream restoration strategy is on hold.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for Amendments 93 and 94, which propose additional statutory obligations for strategic planning authorities in relation to the identification and safeguarding of chalk streams. With 85% of the world’s chalk streams found in England, these unique water bodies are not just vital ecosystems but are indeed a symbol of our national heritage. The Government are committed to restoring them, which is why we are taking a strategic approach to restoring chalk streams. Working in partnership with water companies, investors and communities, the Government will introduce a new water reform Bill to modernise the entire system so that it is fit for purpose for decades to come. This is essential to restoring chalk streams to better ecological health and addressing the multiple pressures facing these habitats.

Alongside the programme of ambitious reforms, the Government are continuing to deliver vital improvements and investment for chalk streams, including £1.8 million through the water restoration fund and water environment improvement fund for locally led

chalk stream projects. Over the next five years, water companies will spend over £2 billion on chalk stream restoration.

The Government remain firmly committed to the restoration and protection of chalk streams. Plan-makers and decision-makers should recognise these habitats as valued landscapes and areas of high biodiversity. They deliver essential ecosystem services, contribute significantly to natural capital, and should be identified and protected through local plans.

As I emphasised in Committee, local nature recovery strategies provide a tool for identifying and enhancing chalk stream habitats. These strategies map priority areas for nature and are informed by key environmental data, such as the assessments carried out under river basin management plans. Under Section 12D(11) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, spatial development strategies must already take account of relevant local nature recovery strategies.

In answer to the points made by the right reverend Prelate, local nature recovery strategies are a legal requirement and are prepared by responsible authorities, typically county or combined authorities appointed by the Defra Secretary of State. There are 48 LNRS areas and lead authorities covering the whole of England; there are no gaps, and no overlaps. LNRS responsible authorities work closely with local partnerships, involving all local planning authorities, to identify and map proposed areas for habitat management, enhancement, restoration and creation for biodiversity and the wider natural environment. The West of England Combined Authority published the first LNRS in November 2024. Five more have since followed: North Northamptonshire Council, Cornwall, Isle of Wight, Essex and Leicestershire. The remaining 42 are expected to be published by the end of 2025, or shortly thereafter.

I will also address the right reverend Prelate’s point about the provisions in the LURA. The Act created a duty requiring plan-makers to take account of LNRS. This builds on the existing requirement on all public authorities to have regard to LNRS in complying with their duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity. This duty will be commenced as part of wider planning reforms later this year.

Where a strategic authority considers chalk stream protection to be of strategic importance, Section 12D(1) requires that spatial development strategies include policies on land use and development that address such strategic priorities. Authorities will therefore be able to include such policies where appropriate.

Furthermore, planning policy is clear that decisions should prevent new and existing development contributing to unacceptable levels of water pollution. Where water quality has the potential to be a significant planning concern, an applicant should explain how the proposed development would affect a relevant water body in a river basin management plan and how they propose to mitigate the impacts.

Fixing systemic issues is essential to addressing the multiple pressures facing these habitats, and restoring our chalk streams to better ecological health is part of our overall programme of ambitious reforms for the water sector.

I will respond to the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I am more than willing to answer all his points—I will try to do so briefly. It might have been more helpful to have them in writing before today, but I will cover the points he has raised. First, on the time-bound commitments to reduce ground water abstraction, we are tackling one of the biggest threats to chalk streams by reducing harmful abstractions by an estimated 126 million litres daily by 2030, protecting vital water flows to these fragile ecosystems.

Companies covering chalk stream areas, such as Affinity Water and South Staffs Water, have made specific commitments to reduce abstraction from chalk streams. Affinity Water has committed to reducing abstraction by 34% by 2050. Portsmouth Water is building a new reservoir in Hampshire to protect the River Test and the River Itchen—this is the first new reservoir to be built since the 1970s. In June 2025, the Environment Agency updated its national framework for water resources, which set out the importance of chalk streams and how we will include their needs in water resources planning and decision-making.

On time-bound commitments to address hundreds of small sewage works in chalk streams that do not remove phosphorus, under the Environment Act, to achieve the 80% reduction in phosphorus load discharge, the phosphorus improvement driver prioritises action for catchments that meet one or more of the following criteria: catchments with water framework directive regulations—phosphorus standard failures; catchments with identified nutrification issues under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Regulations; and catchments where phosphorus targets set by conservation policy advisers are exceeded. That prioritisation ensures targeting to achieve the best environmental outcomes.

In addressing run-off from highways and local roads, the Defra Secretary of State has committed to including a regional element in the new water regulator. We are considering how road or highway run-off and urban diffuse pollution can be managed at a regional or local level as part of moving to a catchment-based approach.

Lastly, on the reform of farming rules for water—which the noble Lord said in his letter are currently ineffective—the levels of water pollution from agriculture are unacceptable. We are looking at reforming the regulations, including the farming rules for water, as a priority within a suite of broader interventions. We are also working with farmers, environmental groups and other parties to improve the farm pollution regulations to make sure that they are simple and effective. This will allow us to deliver pollution reductions and clean up our waters while supporting farm businesses to grow. I hope that is helpful to the noble Lord.

We need to continue to tackle the biggest impacts on chalk streams, including reducing the risk of harmful abstraction, and we are doing so, as I said, by 126 million litres through the amendment of water company abstraction licences, and rebuilding the water network with a record £104 billion investment to upgrade crumbling pipes and cut sewage spills. In light of all this, I hope noble Lords will not press their amendments.

Baroness Grender

My Lords, I thank the Minister. It is very clear there is a strong feeling within this House that there is a need for something to shift and be enshrined in law. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment in order to hand over and support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich if he decides to press his.

Amendment 93 withdrawn.

Amendment 94

Moved by

The Lord Bishop of Norwich

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94: Clause 52, page 73, line 22, at end insert—

“(6A) A spatial development strategy must—(a) list any chalk streams identified in the strategy area;(b) identify the measures to be taken to protect any identified chalk streams from pollution, abstraction, encroachment and other forms of environmental damage; and(c) impose responsibilities on strategic planning authorities in relation to the protection and enhancement of chalk stream habitats.”Member’s explanatory statement

This amendment would require a spatial development strategy to list chalk streams in the strategy area, outline measures to protect them from environmental harm, and impose responsibility on strategic planning authorities to protect and enhance chalk stream environments.

The Lord Bishop of Norwich

My Lords, I thank all who have contributed to this important debate and the Minister for her response. However, I am not convinced by her arguments; we cannot wait for a water reform Bill and have these arguments again at that stage. Amendment 94 seeks to protect chalk streams, this precious habitat which we are the custodians of. It aims to restore biodiversity and create a planning system that works with nature, not against it. At present, I am afraid, the Bill before us fails to do this for chalk streams. Thus, I seek to test the opinion of the House.

Time for a new chair to steer the CaBA chalk stream project.

August 7, 2025August 7, 2025Posted in UncategorizedTagged environment, nature2 Comments

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 …

The future for chalk streams? A response from Government

July 2, 2025July 4, 2025Posted in UncategorizedTagged chalk-stream-petition, chalk-stream-recovery-pack, environment, natureLeave a comment

Last evening the government responded to Sophia Holloway’s petition (currently standing at over 12,000 signatures) “Don’t abandon the Chalk Stream recovery pack”

This is what they said … I’ll comment in numbered notes below.

Government responded

This response was given on 1 July 2025

The government has secured £2 billion from water companies over the next five years to deliver more than 1,000 targeted actions for chalk stream restoration as part of our Plan for Change. (1)

Chalk streams are a source of national pride.  As one of Britain’s most nature rich habitats, they support some of our rarest wildlife – from chalk salmon to trout, they are home to beloved and endangered species.  

This Government will restore our chalk streams to better ecological health as part of our mission to clean up rivers, lakes and seas for good.  Fixing the systemic issues in the water system is essential to address the multiple pressures facing chalk streams. (2)

We are taking action to hold water companies and other polluters to account through the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 and delivering an ambitious programme of reforms will fix the water system, managing and resetting the water sector. (3)

The Government has launched the largest crackdown on water companies in history. The era of profiting from pollution is over. Unfair bonuses have now been banned for six polluting water companies. In the largest criminal action against water companies in history, a record 81 criminal investigations have been launched into sewage pollution. Polluting water bosses who cover up their crimes now face two-year prison sentences. (4.)

Alongside our programme of reforms we are taking immediate action to clean up chalk streams. Water companies will invest £2 billion over the next 5 years to deliver more than 1,000 targeted actions for chalk stream restoration as part of our Plan for Change. (5)
 
Furthermore, the government is investing £1.8 million through the Water Restoration Fund and Water Environment Improvement Fund for locally-led chalk stream clean-up projects across affected regions. And over £100m in fines and penalties levied against water companies will be reinvested into projects to clean up our waters which could include local programmes to address pollution in chalk streams. (6)
 
Our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, funding for which will increase by 150% to £2bn by 2028/2029, are providing incentives for farmers and land managers to farm more sustainably – six of our Landscape Recovery projects are being developed in chalk stream catchments, with potential to benefit up to 350km of chalk stream habitat. (7)
 
We’re tackling one of the biggest impacts on chalk streams by reducing the risk of harmful abstraction by an estimated 126 million litres daily, through the amendment of water company abstraction licences, protecting vital water flows to these fragile ecosystems. (8)

Our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan ensures chalk streams are prioritised for improvement as part of the record £11 billion investment to improve nearly 3,000 storm overflows nationwide. (9)

From June 2025, the Environment Agency’s updated Water Resource National Framework will place chalk stream environmental needs at the heart of all water resource planning and decision making. (10)
 
Our protections through the Water (Special Measures) Act will hold polluters accountable and ensure these iconic British habitats are preserved for future generations. (11)

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

My notes on the above:

This is the amount due for investment through the WINEP (Water Industry National Environment Programme) in the next five-year cycle. It is part of a record-breaking sum (the size of which is to be welcomed and is largely due to the tireless campaigning of the eNGOs and others), but it is not a new announcement. In fact, most companies will have had to trim back their programmes as Ofwat examines and passes the proposals.
Reforming the water system was not on our list of recommendations in the chalk stream strategy and doesn’t address our central ask, which is for greater protection for chalk streams, though clearly it is related. And few would argue with the idea that reform is necessary. There are indeed “systemic issues” and the current system is obviously not working as well as it could in a number of key respects. Monitoring, regulation and enforcement being key. The system also lacks joined up thinking. Empowering the catchment partnership structures would be a good thing.
As above – reform in regard to governance and financial transparency is clearly needed.
Personally I don’t think we should ever kid ourselves that we don’t all “profit from pollution”. We all enjoy clean water and flushing loos. Half the increase in human longevity since the middle of the 19th century is down to improved water sanitation, during which time the environment has picked up most of the bill through diminished natural flows in rivers and by serving the job of national lavatory for treated (and untreated) water. Arguably, it was historically inevitable that things would evolve this way. New towns built over forgotten chalk streams. Natural flows diminished until all the dishwashers and loos discharge their stolen water back into the river. The real cost of water to the environment is not even slightly reflected in water bills. The question is what value does society NOW place on living, healthy rivers? It’s a much higher value than it used to be and half our battle is persuading government to catch up with public opinion.
See 1.
This sounds encouraging. In 2022/23 £242 million in fines was levied on to the water industry only £11 million of which found its way into the Water Restoration Fund, £1.8 million (roughly 18%) of which is finding its way to chalk stream projects. Everyone has been asking, where’s the money gone? Dare we hope for 18% of this new figure? £18 million? You could totally re-naturalise the floodplains and re-meander 6 medium sized chalk streams top to bottom for that kind of sum.
We knew about Landscape Recovery already. It does offer the potential for significant restoration of the chalk streams within LR projects. I’m writing reports for a few of these streams and will be scoping and recommending exactly what I have described in the last line of point 6 above.
This is mostly the reduction of abstraction license headroom rather than actual abstraction reduction. 106 Ml/d of headroom reduction. 20 Ml/d of actual abstraction reduction.
Good stuff but we knew about it already. One component of our request for better protection for chalk streams was delivered by the previous administration when it included chalk streams in the “high priority sites” in the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan.
This is really interesting, if cryptic. We have asked for chalk streams to be prioritised in the environmental destination scenarios in the National Framework for Water Resources. What that means in plain English is that we have asked for chalk streams to be prioritised in the delivery of the abstraction reductions that must be met as part of a process called the National Framework: the construction of a joined up water resources network, where new sources and reservoirs and inter-regional transfers are developed in order to take pressure off the environment. There is a potential “business as usual” scenario which none of us wants to see when it comes to vulnerable chalk streams. This statement by the government is new and encouraging but so far rather vague. It could potentially be another piece in the jigsaw of greater protection (adding to 9. above) for chalk streams.
See 2 and 3 above.

So … possible incremental progress in a couple of respects, one of which could be key, though the statement too is too vague to say either way. It doesn’t amount to the bespoke and specific policy document that the Defra chalk stream recovery pack would have been. Albeit, as I have said, that pack had itself been watered down more to series of commitments to review than to act, it nevertheless would have amounted to a clear steer from the government as to the importance of chalk streams. This response and the Minister’s letter (see previous post) are clearly progress relative to a few months ago when one might have got the impression that chalk streams had slipped through a gap in the floorboards at Defra. Call me blindly optimistic but I’m still holding out for a bespoke document.

A letter from Minister Emma Hardy

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025Posted in UncategorizedTagged ecology, environment, nature, news, sustainability1 Comment

I met with Minster Emma Hardy on a Yorkshire chalk stream earlier in June to discuss what this government might do to help chalk streams. The meeting was mentioned in parliament as excerpted below and I have also received a letter from the Minister setting out the government’s ambition for chalk streams, also below.

I’m obviously as disappointed as anyone that government has dropped the Defra chalk stream recovery pack. I’m still not sure why it has chosen to when the fate of our fragile and unique chalk streams is so obviously important to such a broad range of people and to so many people … including Sir David Attenborough.

Encouragingly, however, Minister Hardy has written “chalk streams will continue to be fundamental to our mission to reform the water system”.

The proof of the pudding, as they say …

I have heard good things about what may in the pipeline (following the Cunliffe and Corry reviews) in terms of revitalised and empowered catchment management, and the easing of the treacle-wading bureaucracy that is a sheet anchor to river restoration efforts. Both much needed. So, it may well be – fingers very crossed – that the progress we make through this term will move things forward for chalk streams.

Nevertheless, the CaBA chalk group continues to feel that the gist of its recommendations – greater protection for chalk streams, prioritised abstraction reduction and phosphate reduction targeted to where it will most benefit ecology (not some obtuse economic algorithm) are all very much in the gift of Defra and Ofwat, and are total no-brainers if we want to restore our chalk streams and deliver on the collegiate, universally supported work of the past 5-years.

Dear Minister Hardy, can we have both?

MINISTER HARDY LETTER Download

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy): Chalk streams are not only a beautiful and iconic part of our precious natural landscape; they are symbols of our national heritage. The protection and restoration of our cherished chalk streams is a core ambition in our overall programme of reform to the water sector.

Luke Murphy: I am grateful to the Minister for her response. In Hampshire, we are blessed with several rare and irreplaceable chalk streams, including the River Loddon, the River Itchen and the River Test. The Minister will be aware of the campaigns to secure greater protection for these irreplaceable habitats, including during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and I pay tribute to the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, Greener Basingstoke, and Natural Basingstoke for all their work. Can the Minister confirm that this Government are committed to the protection of chalk streams, and set out what further steps they will take to restore these precious habitats?

Emma Hardy: My hon. Friend is quite right: chalk streams are a source of beauty and national pride. Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting a chalk stream restoration project with Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who is a passionate campaigner for chalk streams. Under this Labour Government, water companies will spend more than £2 billion to deliver over 1,000 actions for chalk stream restoration, and will reduce their abstraction from chalk streams by 126 million litres per day.

Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con): The River Chess in Rickmansworth is one of the chalk streams that goes through my constituency. The volunteers at the Rickmansworth Waterways Trust are keeping our canal heritage alive, despite funding for the Canal & River Trust being cut. I believe the cut is short-sighted, because these waterways tackle water shortages, boost biodiversity and protect 2,500 miles of national assets for a modest cost. Will the Minister rethink the funding cuts and back the Fund Britain’s Waterways campaign, so that local champions like David Montague and his team at Batchworth lock are not left to sink or swim on their own?

Emma Hardy: The hon. Gentleman is quite right to say how important volunteers are in supporting our natural environment up and down the country. He will be aware that the decision to reduce the funding for the Canal & River Trust was taken by the previous Government, and that was extended under this Government. There will be a tapering off of some of the funding, but we continue to support water projects up and down the country. As I have already mentioned, the changes that we are introducing for water companies will help to protect not only our beautiful chalk streams, but all our rivers, lakes and seas.

How dry is south-east England?

June 20, 2025June 22, 2025Posted in UncategorizedTagged climate-change, environment, news, sustainability, waterLeave a comment

I enjoy Simon Cooper’s chalk stream focussed newsletters, for a variety of reasons, not least that they are well written, sardonic and interesting. No matter what he writes – unarguable truth or arrant nonsense – there’s never a dull moment.

On the 6^th June Simon asked “where do all the water company fines go?”. Good question! The Conservative gov’t introduced the idea that these fines ought to go to improving the environment damaged by water company malpractice. But the sums aren’t ring-fenced. So, of the £242-million levied on the industry in 2022/23, only £11-million found its way into the Water Restoration Fund. We need to ask this question repeatedly: “who is trousering the fines?”

This week Simon is on the water company case again, lampooning Southern Water’s Tim McMahon. McMahon had claimed that the south-east of England was “drier than Istanbul”. Simon called this “Southern Water Fantasy Maths”.

“McMaths,” he wrote “who probably hones his calculating skills watching endless repeats of the numbers game on quiz show Countdown had to perform two feats of contorted logic to arrive at this implausible claim. Firstly, he had to include the population of London in his calculations. The last time I looked our capital was most definitely not in the south-eastern portion of England but hey-ho Tim perhaps you are lining yourself up for a Nobel Prize double to include geography. Secondly, Tim has used the historic average for Istanbul rainfall but compares it to one of the driest periods on record for South-East England.”

In fact Tim had said to the BBC: “If you look at the south-east of England, it’s drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakesh. We have got a very densely populated area and we need to start investing to cater for that. We need to reduce customer usage. Otherwise we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for customers and might not be the best thing for our environment.”

If I were to pick that statement apart, it would not be to make a petty objection to the “drier than …” statement.

The point is kind of obviously rhetorical, not literal. Tim is also clearly referring to the geographical reality, not the regional concept. London is undeniably in south-east England. It is a region in itself, however, so it is not technically in the region described as “the South-East”.

To match the pedantry I looked up the “centre of England” and found it – deemed so by Ordnance Survey – to be a village in Leicestershire called Fenny Drayton, definitely above and to the left of London.

As for the rainfall, across the south-east of England it is generally a bit less than 650mm a year. Sydney’s average rainfall is 1150mm, Istanbul’s 820mm, Dallas’ 880mm, and Marrakesh’s average is 250mm.

So, McMahon was wrong about Marrakesh.

To his wider point, however: south-east England is undeniably dry. Why object to someone saying that blindingly obvious truth?

And I’m glad Tim has pulled London into his justification, because it is around London that our chalk streams are most damaged by abstraction. That’s because there are too many tea-pots, basins, showers, loos, baths and gardens relative to how much rain falls in the Thames basin.

The Misbourne is regularly dry. As are the upper Beane and Darent. Abstraction in the upper Lea is 90% of average recharge. The poor-old Lea doesn’t really become a river until the Luton sewage works discharge.

That’s why we do need investment, a national grid for water, pipelines, reservoirs and de-salination. The lot.

The part of Tim’s statement that is of concern is the idea that if we don’t trim usage we may have to put other investments in place, which might be bad for customers.

That’s the bit to focus on.

Demand reduction per head of itself solves only one problem: demand increase through development. On it’s own trimming customer usage just allows the government to build more houses.

To see chalk streams flowing naturally again, we need to reduce the amount of water we take out of chalk aquifers. And we can’t do that without investment.

Sophia’s petition

June 2, 2025February 8, 2026Posted in UncategorizedTagged chalk streams, environment, waterLeave a comment

Last Friday afternoon 30th May Sophia’s petition “please don’t abandon the chalk stream recovery pack” passed 10,000 names. By Monday almost another 1000 names had been added.

This is fantastic news. It means that the government must now respond.

And maybe they have, to a degree. On Monday I met Minister Emma Hardy by a Yorkshire chalk stream. Many thanks to our guide Matt Arnold from the East Yorkshire Rivers Trust.

Though we were standing beside the Boston beck, perhaps one of the least pressured chalk streams in England, Minister Hardy was genuinely keen to know more about the multiple threats to chalk streams and what we should be doing to make things better.

We discussed the extreme levels of abstraction that exist on some chalk streams, especially those near London, and the suffocating nutrient pollution that comes from innumerable small sewage works where there is no phosphorous limit or where, if one exists, it is absurdly lax. We especially focussed on the lack of clarity in catchment level decision-making, something I feel the government could help with by unambiguously signalling the importance of chalk streams.

That signal should have taken the form of the Defra chalk stream recovery pack, of course, but I’m not holding my breath for a change of heart regarding its publication. Though you never know.

I will certainly continue to push, arguing why many of the measures in the pack were low-cost no-brainers: stuff that builds on existing policy with greater clarity and purpose, that would remove blockers in bureaucracy or give clear signals to water resource groups and water companies on where to prioritise abstraction reduction or target better water quality in vulnerable headwaters or that gives support to stakeholders.

My guess is that the treasury has put more or less everything on hold while it tries to prioritise growth through development.

This is worrying. Water efficiency through demand and leak reduction, for example – THE big plays in our national framework for water resources over the next two decades – means nothing for nature, unless accompanied by actual abstraction reduction. Of itself water efficiency simply makes headroom for development. And in the current climate this is almost certainly what it will be used to deliver.

Similarly, if the water industry is left to meet the previous government’s laudable nutrient reduction targets (as set out in the Environmental Improvement Plan) via “highest technical standards” at large works downstream of large population centres where highish standards exist already, then of course this will be the preferred “cost-effective” pathway for all parties.

All parties except fish and insects who might prefer those chemicals are removed upstream of where they live. The point is, you can create a great headline figure for phosphorus removal where it makes little ecological benefit, but why not direct the targets towards their purpose?

Without direction from government or its regulators on how to prioritise either abstraction or phosphorus reduction, economic efficiency of a decidedly anthropogenic kind will decide. River life will receive little benefit from initiatives intended to restore it.

Frustratingly, it’s all about economics – no matter who’s in charge – and so long as water is as cheap as it is, and so long as imaginative and economically-efficient ideas like Chalk Streams First or nutrient treatment wetlands or risk-based buffer strips (all measures a recovery pack might have given prominence to) are starved of oxygen, then nature will pick up the bill.

And thus the can is kicked down the road.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The chalk recovery pack would have been Defra’s first bespoke policy document for chalk streams. This government could yet dig it out, add some oomph to the stuff that got watered down, and defy my cynicism. No one would be happier to be proved wrong.

In the meanwhile, it was a pleasure to meet the Minister and I’m very much hoping we can meet again soon on one of the Flagship project sites, the Chess, for example where Kate Heppell is leading amazing citizen science research, or the Anton, where Simon Cain and Bob Wellard are concocting imaginative re-wilding schemes. And then perhaps the beleaguered Ivel which barely flows, or the Ver whose headwaters this winter have been constantly polluted with raw sewage.