Tag: nature

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

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , 1 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.

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

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , 2 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

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , Leave 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. As above – reform in regard to governance and financial transparency is clearly needed.
  4. 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.
  5. See 1.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , 1 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 LETTERDownload

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.

Sophia’s petition to the government.

Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , 6 Comments

An open letter to everyone who cares about chalk streams:

Dear friends,

I’m writing to you to ask a favour. A few days ago I received an email out of the blue from a lady called Sophia Holloway. I don’t know Sophie but she tells me that she was so angered by the government’s decision (reported and commented on in The Times over Christmas – links below) to drop the Defra chalk recovery strategy work that she has started a petition. 

This is so heartening and is so very kind of her.

But the petition will go nowhere without support from everyone who cares. If there’s not enough support, I fear the government may double down on their timid and unpopular decision not to publish the now oven-ready chalk stream recovery pack and even their other chalk stream work.

We need people to hear about Sophia’s petition. So, please will you:

  • sign the petition
  • give the petition a plug, even repeated plugs, in your social media platforms and share in any other way you can.

Let’s see if we can do justice to Sophia’s anger and good faith?

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/711368

There’s an album of chalk stream images at the foot of this page: of beautiful chalk streams to show why we should look after them and of knackered streams to show what we need to protect them from. Anyone is welcome to grab and use them for social media posts (an attribution to chalk streams.org would be appreciated and may even spread the word)

•••

A bit of background in case it is needed …

A few years ago I was invited to chair and oversee the creation of a national strategy for protecting and restoring chalk streams. Countless passionate people and all the key players, the regulators, industry and eNGOs worked together to create a collaborative national restoration plan that will – if the actions are followed on – make a considerable difference to chalk stream protection and health.

It is a simple strategy for addressing – in practical and pragmatic ways – abstraction, water pollution and habitat restoration. Under the last government we even got to the point where the then Minister Rebecca Pow promised a Defra policy document in support called the Defra Chalk Stream Recovery Pack. I know what was in that document because I negotiated with Defra over its contents and wrote it for and with them.

But foot-dragging over certain key issues delayed publication and then, when the election came along, the plan was put on hold. Now the new government has shelved it, or in fact – apparently – abandoned it. See The Times pieces below:

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/labour-shelves-rescue-plan-for-globally-rare-chalk-streams-58537f56k

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/the-times-view-saving-chalk-streams-6mzjrhk8x

This is no way to deliver environmental improvement. No matter one’s politics it is obvious that we will only resolve the issues that impact our rivers if the government of the day rises above party politics and builds continuity into our approach to protecting and restoring the environment.

I really hope you can support Sophia’s initiative. Thank you so much.

With very best wishes as ever,

Charles.