Introduction
Welcome to the second issue of Water Resources East’s quarterly newsletter – the latest developments in water resources and integrated water management taking place across the Eastern region.
Lots has been happening on the policy and regulatory front since our last issue in February – see the policy section below for full details. The most significant is Defra’s Plan for Water published last month, which aims to move water and flood risk management toward a much more holistic, integrated, catchment-based approach. The Plan for Water also highlighted draft decisions published by Ofwat the previous day to approve early investment in a range of projects proposed by water companies to boost the resilience of the public water supply following last year’s drought. The list of proposals include several projects in the east. But not every proposal was approved, and we hope Ofwat will reconsider bringing forward the Anglian Water to Cambridge Water transfer to allow early reductions in abstraction from the chalk aquifer.
RAPID has been busy too, and last month published their gate 2 draft decisions on 14 strategic resources options, including the two new major reservoirs in our draft Regional Plan. Gate 2 is an important milestone toward regulatory approval, and both reservoir projects were given the green light to proceed toward the next gate in September 2024. However, the Fens Reservoir will have an additional checkpoint in January 2024 to review further evidence on its cost effectiveness and importance to our regional plan.
We have a feature article in this quarter’s newsletter written by one of our members, the Horticultural Trades Association. We invited them to write this because they highlighted some very interesting initiatives in their response to the consultation on our draft Regional Plan. If you would like to provide an article for future editions of this newsletter, please email Rebecca using contact@staging.wre.org.uk.
I’m delighted to introduce two new members of the WRE team. Alice Rigg joined us in March as our new Water Resources Technical Analyst. She recently completed her Masters Degree in environmental science at UEA. Earlier this month, Katharine Smart joined us from Ricardo to become our Principal Water Resources Specialist. Together they significantly increase our in-house capability to support our multi-sector work. For example, Katharine will lead our new cross-sector Drought Group that met for the first time this month.
We are also on the hunt for new non-executive directors to join our multi-sector board. We have launched an open call for new principal funding members and a new stakeholder director. More details can be found on our website, including how to apply.
Daniel Johns
Managing Director