News

Britain’s water systems need radical overhaul, not just some incremental improvements to water company
regulation, according to Mark Lloyd, chief executive of the Rivers Trust.

“We don’t need a service and MOT on our old banger of a water management system, we need a new car
with a hybrid engine and go-faster stripes,” he told the Worshipful Company of Water Conservators on 2 July.

He gave two cheers for the interim report of the government’s Independent Water Commission, chaired by
Sr Jon Cunliffe, for its focus on the importance of a new collaborative, catchment and nature-based model
for water management – something the Rivers Trust has long advocated.

But to warrant three cheers he said Cunliffe’s final report should talk more about other parts of the water
system. The focus on water companies and failures in the regulation of the water industry was
understandable, given recent media attention on sewage. “But there is a danger that the dominance of this
focus in the report will perpetuate the public perception that all we need to do to achieve healthy rivers is
to fix water companies,” he said. “We won’t clean up our rivers unless we apply the same focus to
agricultural and highway runoff, both of which are also the principal causes of flooding.”

He called for more emphasis in the final report on monitoring the health of rivers, after 15 years of cuts to
Environment Agency budgets, less spending on hard engineering and more on nature-based solutions, and
for a more joined up approach from government to water issues. “We simply face too many existential
crises to solve them one at a time,” he said, adding: “We need to fix the broken water management system
that too often sees government plans written but not funded or delivered, and polluters not being held to
account.”

Welcoming his remarks Peter Matthews, a past master of the Water Conservators, said that the Company
and the Rivers Trust didn’t always see eye-to-eye on the causes of problems in the water sector, but they
agreed on many of the solutions – in particular the need for a more joined-up approach from government
and on the importance of local catchment management plans for water.

Nick Higham

highamnews@gmail.com