River Basin Management Plans - State of the Nation

All views and opinions expressed are my own! Ran out of space as a simple post, so switched to this format!

The 3rd Cycle of River Basin Management Plans (RMBPs) under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are due to come into force at the end of this year, which falls under an area of devolved responsibility in the UK. This is the key piece of European legislation that aims to delivery water quality improvements. Whilst the UK is no longer in Europe, of course, the legislation has been placed onto the UK statute book and so remains the cornerstone of water quality for now (who knows how long we'll stick with it!).

Back in 2018, all four home nations consulted on the timetable for updates, that included releasing updated RBMPs in December 2020 for a 6-month consultation period in readiness for bringing them into force.

Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru / Natural Resources Wales and Scottish Environment Protection Agency have both launched consultations on the updated River Basin Management Plans that fall solely under their jurisdiction (Wales Consultation; Scotland Consultation). No surprises that these are the two administrations that have also made SuDS for all new developments (including redevelopments) mandatory as one of the key mechanisms for delivering improvements or, at the very least, preventing detriment to water quality.

Meanwhile in England, Environment Agency have yet to release anything (including for those where they are the lead authority for the ones that are both in England and either Scotland or Wales) and anticipate releasing them for consultation "after the summer" and have failed to progress their own Environment Bill yet again for at least 6 months (Environment Bill delayed). The WFD requires a 6-month public consultation period, so England will still be consulting on the draft 3rd cycle RBMPs at the time at which they should be coming into force. It's not quite all doom and gloom in Westminster, as the Environment Audit Committee Inquiry into Water Quality in Rivers is open until the 5th February.

No news yet as to when Northern Ireland Environment Agency plan to consult on their updated RBMP, although in fairness, I've not directly asked them for an update.

To me, this does quite neatly capture how seriously the devolved nations are taking the commitment to achieving overall good water quality status by 2027 and is showing up on the comparative status across the different river basins (well done to Scotland on actually having some "high" ecological status rivers).

You know that 2027 deadline of course... it's the one that's been moved back twice from the original 2015 target. Oh and the one that the most recent monitoring reports have told us that we're moving further away from achieving as opposed to getting closer! Still we've only been working towards it since 2000, so perhaps we just need a little more time!

After all, we can just opt out of the WFD and now have freedom to ignore any European Court of Justice rulings should we continue to fail to meet the objectives and introduce our own independent watchdog (Office for Environmental Protection)... except the introduction of that has gone back at least 6 months too!