Defra opens £11m Water Restoration Fund using ring-fenced water fines

Defra has opened its Water Restoration Fund with an initial £11m from water company pollution fines.

The new fund offers grant funding on a competitive basis to support local groups, farmers, landowners and community-led schemes to deliver on-the-ground projects to improve the water environment. This could include activities that boost biodiversity and community access to blue and green spaces as well as river restoration.

Water company fines and penalties have been ring fenced since April 2022 to finance the new fund. The £11m will be allocated for improvements in the water company areas in which offences took place, namely:

• Anglian Water: £3,085,000  

• South West Water: £2,150,000  

• Thames Water: £3,334,000  

• United Utilities: £800,000  

• Yorkshire Water: £1,600,750
  

Applicants have eight weeks to apply, with grant awards expected from late July.

Commenting, Mark Lloyd, chief executive of The Rivers Trust, said: “Whilst any money that goes towards improving our water environment is helpful, this £11m is just a fraction of the investment needed to restore our rivers, given that no stretch of river in England is currently in good overall health.

“What's more, it is hard to see how this fund will improve the health of our waterways as the Government claims, when it is entirely resourced from water company fines and therefore relies on environmental damage happening in the first place.

“We are disappointed to see yet another Government scheme rolled out without warning and consulting with stakeholders. We need to see a major boost in funding and resources to improve our water environment to go alongside this particular funding stream, enabling a truly integrated approach to land and water management that will deliver for nature and for everyone.”

• The Rivers Trust last week updated its sewage discharge map to include 2023 data. The Trust said there had been a total of 579,581 spills of untreated sewage across England and Wales in the year, taking place over 4,608,495 hours. More than 464,000 of these took place in England, where monitors are now in place for 100% of storm overflows with a monitoring requirement. See https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map