CIWEM calls on the Government to deliver ‘A Fresh Water Future’

(by Karma Loveday)

The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) has called on the Government to make “a fresh water future” a reality when it publishes its White Paper following the Cunliffe Review.

In a 2025 report, updating on progress and priorities emerging since the January 2024 publication A Fresh Water Future, CIWEM praised government actions to date, including the Water (Special Measures) Act, commissioning the Cunliffe Review and supporting £104bn of investment through to 2030.

However, the report want on to say: “These measures are only the start of what needs to happen. A long journey of infrastructure renewal, policy, regulatory, governance and planning reform and changing the UK’s culture of how it delivers infrastructure and development are all needed to make a noticeable impact on the current state of our water environment.” It noted water bodies remain in a “parlous state” – polluted, stressed, with declining biodiversity and at times posing flood risk.

CIWEM called on the Government to bring forward a White Paper that: 

• Addresses water issues beyond the water industry – to improve the management of agricultural runoff, highway runoff and the water impacts associated with new and existing development. 

• Ensures the new ‘super regulator’ for water does not result in a more fragmented and siloed approach to managing the water cycle, and is provided with sufficient capacity and resources to do its job effectively.

• Prioritises managing rainwater where it falls – “This should be exemplified in a ‘sponge cities’ approach to building the Government’s planned range of new towns and supported by a mandatory requirement for sustainable drainage that embeds a formal mechanism for SuDS approval, adoption and maintenance.” 

• Sets out a renewed commitment to an Environmental Land Management Scheme lower tier that incentivises good water management. “Whilst recognising the importance of better food security for the UK, this should prioritise making space for water through nature corridors alongside watercourses and strategically targeting less-productive areas of agricultural land for nature-based solutions for water.”

• In a separate report, CIWEM called for a comprehensive programme to understand the skills gap facing the water sector and to seize the opportunity to address it. Your Future found 69% of CIWEM members agreed there is “a lack of capacity to do all the work the industry has committed to” – but more positively that only 3% are thinking of leaving the sector. It set out a seven-step plan for skills investment, collaborative working, new training programmes, and integrated technical and ecological apprenticeships.