The government’s efforts to clean up England’s rivers, lakes and seas have been criticised by a key environmental watchdog as “poor”.

Government plans lack detail, commitment and adequate funding.

By Jonah Fisher www.bbc.co.uk

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), a statutory body, said targets to improve water health were going to be missed by a “large margin”.

It said government plans lack detail, commitment and adequate funding.

A government spokesperson said this government had done “more than any other” to restore waterways.

The OEP was established after Brexit to hold the government and other public bodies to account on environmental issues, given that EU oversight no longer applied.

In this latest report, the OEP looked at whether the laws protecting England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters from pollution were up to the job, and how they’re being enforced.

“We found the legal framework to be basically sound. But the way that it’s being interpreted and implemented is really being done poorly,” Dame Glenys Stacey, the chair of the OEP, told BBC News.

“That means that government is very unlikely to achieve its ambitions for our waters. In fact, it’s very likely to miss by a large margin,” she said.

At the moment, just 16% of England’s waterways are rated as having Good Ecological Status. The government stated target is for that to rise to 77% by 2027. But the OEP says reaching 21% is seen as more likely.

“Unless things change, it’s a very poor situation,” Dame Glenys said.

The OEP criticised what it called the government’s “generic one size fits all” approach to improving waterways and said that there needed to be more detail, commitment and funding.

The environment secretary now has three months to respond officially to the OEP report.

But a spokesperson provided immediate comment and said that recent years had seen greatly increased monitoring of sewage discharges and plans to invest billions of pounds in wastewater treatment infrastructure.

“This government has done more than any other to protect and restore our rivers, lakes and coastal waters with record levels of investment, monitoring and enforcement,” the spokesperson said.

“We welcome this report’s recommendations to go further and will consider them in detail.”

Most of the campaign groups contacted by BBC News said the report confirmed what they already knew.

“It is no surprise that following years of underinvestment, weak regulation and poor instruction on how to deliver plans, that the government are off track for the majority of their plans to improve the health of England’s waterways,” Louise Reddy from Surfers Against Sewage said.

“The long-term health of our rivers is dependent on what we do now to support them,” Mark Lloyd, CEO of the Rivers Trust, told BBC News.

“This report proves our long-held suspicion that current policy and legislation is not enough – we need to change course to save our rivers.”

The winner of the next general election will have to raise taxes to maintain the current provision for public services, according to new analysis by a leading think tank.

Henry Saker-Clark www.independent.co.uk 

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) added that there is “essentially no fiscal headroom for any further tax cuts” amid slow economic growth and easing inflation.

The UK economy grew by 0.1% in 2023 after pressure from higher interest rates and hikes by ratesetters at the Bank of England to slow rampant inflation.

In its latest economic outlook report, NIESR said it forecasts GDP (gross domestic product) will have grown 0.4% over the first quarter of 2024 and will rise 0.8% for the year as a whole, compared with 2023.

Nevertheless, it said this still represents an “anaemic UK GDP growth trend”.

It comes a week after the UK’s economic growth prospects were downgraded for the next two years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), adding that it is on track for the weakest growth of the G7 group of countries next year.

Stephen Millard, deputy director for macroeconomic modelling and forecasting at NIESR, said: “Despite the welcome fall in inflation, UK growth remains anaemic.

“This will make it difficult for any incoming government to carry out the much-needed investment in infrastructure and the green transition, as well as increase spending on public services and defence, without either raising taxes or rewriting the fiscal rules.

“This makes clear the need to reform the fiscal framework to enable the government to do what is needed for the economy in a fiscally sustainable way.”

It is currently widely expected that the next UK general election will take place in the second half of 2024, with the Labour Party shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves saying earlier this week that they plan to fight the next election on the state of the economy.

NIESR also said in the report that it predicts there will next be an interest rate cut, from the current level of 5.25%, in August. It has factored in two cuts this year.

The forecasts also indicated that average living standards are due to improve by around 6% in 2024/25 compared with the previous year, but stressed this picture varies significantly between the income distribution.

The poorest tenth of households will experience a 2% decline in disposable income, while households in deciles four to nine will see a 7%-8% improvement.

Adrian Pabst, NIESR deputy director for public policy, said: “While real wages are rising, households in the bottom half of the income distribution continue to feel the impact from the cost-of-living crisis, with housing costs wiping out the benefits from higher real wages.

“Similarly, the freezing of the personal allowance and tax bands is making low and middle-income households worse off despite the cut to National Insurance Contributions.

“Despite some efforts, regional inequalities are persistent and, in some cases, getting worse.”

EDDC needs a clear answer from residents not just landowners. – Owl

Local Plan leaves us steps ahead

Paul Arnott 

On Monday night this week for the first time in years I watched the climax of the world snooker finals on BBC2 when Kyren Wilson prevailed over the dignified Jak Jones.

It took me back to growing up with a quarter-sized snooker table which could be pulled from behind a cupboard and balanced on the table in the dining room.

It bred a very odd technique in me and my teenage friends, like bonsai gardeners who thought they were lumberjacks. When a few years later we could go into pubs with full-size snooker tables, we found that our quarter-size slice shots and rocket powered potting often left us pitifully short of our aim on the seemingly huge baize surface.

We also learned harshly that snooker was more than a parlour game about potting balls; it was about thinking three steps ahead, building a defence in case you missed an ambitious pot and of course, which we simply never managed on our mini-Crucible in the dining room with half-length cues, snookering the other players.

Snooker at the highest level is about mental strength and character, but also about strategy. And so, it was watching the snooker final that I found myself for about half an hour paying minimal attention to where the brilliant players were potting the balls, sometimes from seemingly impossible positions, but focussing instead on only where the white ball went, from the moment it was played to the incredibly intelligent position it ended up, a whole line of tactics ready to flow from that.

I now offer a perhaps torturous analogy with the predicament of the many East Devon residents across the whole district who are worried that in the process of making the Local Plan, which government obliges us to do, the council is looking at Green Wedges and their future status. (A Green Wedge is a portion of land between existing communities which is not favoured as developable land because to build there would encourage coalescence between villages or towns.)

Quite understandably, local people who wish to conserve Green Wedges – and I was at the heart of a campaign to designate land between Colyford and Seaton as such a decade ago – are very worried that even considering their status as we develop the Local Plan risks de-designating some or all of the sites. This perceived threat is also being whipped up further by some seeking electoral gain.

However, from the many meetings I have attended with good councillors from all political backgrounds, none of them want de-designation to happen and are mature enough to realise that just discussing their future does not equate to a desire to abolish. It has now been agreed that the Green Wedges will be put out to public consultation, so that the council may take the current temperature of support for and against Green Wedge designation.

As a good snooker player realises, one simple pot of angry public objection or a publicity campaign will not win the game. The government has set the rules, and, like it or not, the people and councillors of East Devon need to control the white ball. This won’t be about valid and valiant speech-making; it will be about where local people and their elected representatives want to land in the end. By offering the matter out to public consultation, we have ensured the white ball is out there for local communities to play.

We genuinely need all those with an interest to take part. You can be certain that aspiring landowners and developers will.