‘Good’ ecological status in rivers and lakes ebbs to 14%

(by Karma Loveday)

Just 14.3% of surface waters in England achieved ‘good’ ecological status under the Water Framework Directive Regulations (WFDR) in 2025, according to new data from the Environment Agency (EA). Just 0.1% were ‘high’, 65.4% were ‘moderate’, 17% were ‘poor’ and 3.1% ‘bad’. 

The EA pointed out that the 14.3% ‘good’ figure is not directly comparable with the 16.3% found to be ‘good’ when classifications were last updated (in 2019, as this happens every six years), because analytical methods have changed. The watchdog also highlighted other factors mitigating the picture of a low pass rate: 

• The WFD’s ‘one out, all out’ rule means that a single failing element can cause an entire water body to fail overall status. 82% of individual ecological indicators were at least ‘good’ in 2025, “demonstrating the underlying health of many waterways is encouraging even where overall classifications haven’t shifted”. Around a third of water bodies that failed to achieve good status did so because of just one element.

• No other European country is on track to meet the high bar of WFDR objectives. For instance, Germany has 8% of waters ‘good’ and the Netherlands just 1%. 

Meanwhile, no surface waters met chemical standards, largely due to persistent pollutants that accumulate in the environment and take decades to deplete.

The news was slightly improved for groundwaters, where 41% achieved good status, up from 37% in 2019.

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) called the latest dataset “very worrying”. Helen Venn, OEP chief regulatory officer, said: “This is why we have an open investigation – because it is our view that Defra and the Environment Agency are failing to comply with environmental law, and these failures are leading to a continued failure to improve water quality… The WFD Regulations require plans to be in place for individual water bodies. These plans define the environmental objectives for each water body, and should set out the measures that will be implemented to achieve them. When we looked in detail at these plans, however, we found they didn’t address specific issues at individual sites. We continue to engage with Defra and the EA in relation to the action they are taking to ensure compliance with the law... [and we] are also considering our next steps, which could include further enforcement action.”

The Rivers Trust also called the data “deeply worrying,” and said it showed little progress on 2019. The trust also pointed out that the data is incomplete, given sites deemed to be low-risk escape continued attention and the list of tested chemicals is outdated, excluding many emerging contaminants of concern. It called for an integrated approach to quality monitoring and for the EA to release full site level data.