Charter for Rivers

We must stop sewage reaching freshwater and coastal habitats, including by ensuring significant investment in sewage infrastructure to complement increased nature-based solutions and catchment-based approaches.

We must stop agricultural pollutants reaching freshwater and coastal habitats, including by ensuring that retailers and agri-businesses pay farmers fairly for sustainably produced goods to incentivise good environmental practices and that Government regulation and payments support pollution prevention.

Not a single river in England has achieved ‘good chemical status’. We must stop harmful chemical, domestic, industrial and plastic waste, both at source and reaching freshwater and coastal habitats, through legislation and education.

Due to under-investment in water security, over 15 billion litres of water are abstracted daily for public and business use. The water industry must prioritise future investment in water security and significantly reduce river abstraction—especially from unique chalk streams—to ensure the needs of rivers and their wildlife come before other uses.

Two-thirds of UK freshwater species are in decline and 10% are already threatened with extinction. We must allow rivers to act in a more natural way by reconnecting them to their floodplains, removing barriers and physical modifications and establishing a nationwide network of natural river buffers to catch pollution before it reaches the river and provide corridors for wildlife to connect, recover and biodiversity to thrive, incentivised by farm payment schemes.

The planning system has been responsible for encouraging developments that have poured pollution into our rivers. We must reform planning, consenting and permitting systems to ensure all development decisions first consider environmental impacts at a catchment level and promote the use of nature-based solutions in building resilient river systems.

Over the past decade, environmental protection budgets within our regulatory agencies have been slashed by more than 70%. It is essential to ensure that the duties of these agencies and watchdogs prioritise environmental protection. They must be adequately funded and resourced to conduct regular inspections of likely polluters and to actively enforce regulations, imposing meaningful penalties on those who knowingly violate the law.

Our rivers are victim to complex and varying regulations and processes that delay progress, with some major catchments falling between the different regulatory regimes of different devolved nations.