13 Apr 2017

Blueprint response to the Government’s strategic priorities and objectives for Ofwat April 2017 Blueprint for Water is a unique coalition of environmental, water efficiency, fisheries and angling organisations and a campaign of Wildlife and Countryside Link. ‘We welcome the opportunity to engage with Defra on the Strategic Policy Statement (SPS) to Ofwat. We are pleased […]

11 Apr 2017

Defra published litter strategy Litter louts could be hit with £150 fines as part of ambitious new plans to tackle rubbish in England. Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom unveiled the Government’s first Litter Strategy for England to reduce the near £800m burden to the taxpayer of clean-up costs. Under the new measures, the most serious litterers could be […]

06 Apr 2017

Natural Flood Management (NFM) has as Duncan Huggett outlines has become very fashionable, but it is neither new or, as a top level scientific review highlighted recently, a ‘silver bullet’. There are still many questions to answer in relation to its appropriate application, not least in terms of location of schemes in the catchment. With […]

06 Apr 2017

Bob Earll & Bruce Horton: The current challenges facing Defra are without precedent, not least the uncertainty over Brexit and its colossal workload. So the ENDS report suggesting further delays to the 25 year plan ‘framework’ (i.e. no detail) is hardly surprising. Business planning 101 would tell us that at times of massive uncertainty long […]

22 Mar 2017

The Green Alliance added its voice to that of the Environmental Audit Committee highlighting the ongoing delay to the release of Agriculture and Environment 25 year plans. We seem to be in the phoney war phase of Brexit, the calm before the storm, when nothing is appearing. These two documents are crucial to the Brexit […]

22 Mar 2017

CCC warns MPs over lack of data on UK critical infrastructure assets at risk of flooding  The Environmental Audit Committee held a one off session on climate change adaptation in light of the recent publication of the Government’s Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017. This assessment draws primarily on the independent Evidence Report commissioned from the CCC’s Adaptation […]

20 Mar 2017

Timed perfectly to coincide with MMO’s quota documentation on this the New Economics Foundation report explores how this process is undertaken by different European countries. Griffin Carpenter: Fish stocks are owned by no one but desired by many. How, then, should access to fish stocks be determined? In the EU, member states have answered this question very […]

15 Mar 2017

Defra publish strategic policy statement Water UK Communications: Defra publish their strategic policy statement for the water industry for consultation. This document sets out the government’s strategic priorities for Ofwat’s regulation of the water sector in England. We welcome the move to a more concise SPS which clearly highlights securing long-term resilience and protecting customers […]