UK Water Partnership calls for independent water data system

(by Verity Mitchell)

Ahead of the Government’s White Paper on water reform, the UK Water Partnership published its own high-level paper discussing how to restore both river health and public trust.

The recommendations in the report were to:

 1 — Establish a unified strategic framework for river health

Stakeholders with responsibility and accountability for river health should adopt a coordinated, three-pronged approach to:

• Define a shared ambition for the future state of the water environment.

• Develop and implement a strategic roadmap to achieve this ambition.

• Foster collaboration and cooperation across all relevant sectors and stakeholder groups to ensure alignment and sustained progress.

2 — Rebuild public trust through transparency and engagement

Responsible bodies must take deliberate action to restore public confidence by:

• Identifying and addressing the root causes of mistrust, including historical and systemic issues.

• Implementing a strategic, long-term approach to rebuild trust through transparency, accountability, and meaningful, objective public engagement.

• Continuously monitoring the trust cycle to identify weak points, and proactively working to improve these by developing and strengthening relationships between key stakeholders.

3 — Create a UK-wide, independent data reporting system

A comprehensive, real-time data reporting system should be established to:

• Provide reliable, transparent, and accessible information on water health across the UK.

• Support evidence-based planning and decision-making, and enhance credibility among stakeholders including the media, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGO), advocacy groups, and the public.

• Ensure data independence, with open-source access and governance free from influence by any single sector.

• Strengthen citizen science contributions by supporting the robustness and integration of data collected by community-led initiatives.

Analysis and comment:

Of the three overarching recommendations, the third could do much to rebuild trust. The paper observed: “There is often a lack of accessible, accurate, and verifiable information (either from or independent to the sector under scrutiny) and communication that at best leads to scepticism and limits the ability to share facts and context.”

However, as the Environment Agency itself points out, all data needs to be presented in such a way as to both educate and clearly define realistic expectations for improvement. Event Duration Monitoring of storm overflows in England has certainly delivered increased information on flows into rivers but the unintended consequence was a marked deterioration of trust in the water companies.

More widely, while the report calls for action, its conclusions mirror those of the Independent Water Commission recommendations and provide little more in the way of tangible, structural answers to the problems. For example, it identified that: “A general view would be a healthy river can be characterised by clear and unpolluted water that supports a diverse and thriving ecosystem, whilst those who partake in immersive water sports or swimming may expect a higher level of microbial quality to reduce the risk of illness.” This general aspiration is subjective, lacks precise definitions – such as how clear and unpolluted water should be defined – and has unlimited scope. It could be argued that the step change in investment in AMP8 has already defined "the ambition…to reach a state that can be reasonably achieved using the resource and funding available”.

The Government’s White Paper needs to provide a roadmap, not just a series of aspirations that are already shared by the water industry itself.