Other stories from last week

(by Karma Loveday)

Severn Trent has applied for a drought permit to continue abstraction from the River Derwent over winter even if it has low flows due to more dry weather. The company needs to keep Carsington Reservoir topped up for public water supply. Severn Trent said it did not anticipate harm to wildlife or ecology in the river as winter flows are naturally higher anyway.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Defra have reported using government-built AI tool Consult to analyse the 50,000+ responses to the Independent Water Commission’s review. They said it took two hours for Consult to categorise the responses into themes, costing only £240. Experts only needed 22 hours to check the results. A subsequent review found the tool at least matched human accuracy. Applied widely to other consultations, DSIT said Consult could save officials from 75,000 days of manual analysis every year, equating to £20m in staff costs.

Mandatory sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) would add £3bn of value to new homes by 2030. That’s according to research from Public First for the Enabling Water Smart Communities project. This found that if SuDS were required for the 1.3m new homes forecast to be built by 2030, the benefit to residents could be as much as £219m annually, which translates to a £3.1bn property price premium. The research also found that the public would pay an average of £281 more a year to live in a home with SuDS to be at lower risk of flooding, and that such a home would command a £4,000 market value premium over an otherwise identical property with standard drainage systems.

Northern Ireland’s environmental regulator should be independent of government, according to an expert panel commissioned by the environment minister in November 2024. The panel’s  Environmental governance in NI report contains 32 recommendations, many of which are designed to bring clearer separation between policy making and regulation and to improve public confidence and trust in governance arrangements. The independent panel proposed that the regulator should have oversight of issues such as air and water quality, waste management, nature and biodiversity and the marine environment. 

Defra has responded to the Office for Environmental Protection’s (OEP) Progress in improving the natural environment in England 2023 to 2024 report. It has largely accepted the OEP’s recommendations and said they will be fed into work on revising the Environmental Improvement Plan. This will include delivery information to set out how the UK Government will meet Environment Act targets. View the full response here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-response-to-the-oep-report-environmental-improvement-plan-progress-from-2023-to-2024/government-response-to-january-2025-office-for-environmental-protection-oep-report-on-eip-progress-from-2023-to-2024

Innovate UK Business Connect has launched the Cross-Sector Water Innovation Network (CSWIN), to act as a single point of access for innovators, supply chain partners and end-users from all sectors who may wish to take part in the new cross-sector challenge that is part of the AMP8 Ofwat Innovation Fund. Ofwat has partnered with Innovate UK to deliver the new £40m Water Innovation Cross Sector Challenge, which will consider challenges such as regenerative farming, reducing water pollutants at source and improving the water efficiency of data centres.