Working with others – Arun and Western Streams catchment

• West Sussex County Council
• Surrey County Council
• Chichester District Council
• Adur and Worthing Councils
• Mid Sussex District Council
• Arun District Council
• Horsham District Council
• Waverley Borough Council
• The Environment Agency
• The South Downs National Park Authority
• The Arun and Rother Catchment Partnership and member organisations including:
  • The Arun and Rother Rivers Trust
  • The Sussex Wildlife Trust
  • The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
• Thames Water
• Portsmouth Water

Working together to co-create the DWMP is important. Our drainage and wastewater systems are often inter-connected with the systems managed and operated by others and affect the natural environments within the catchment.

A wide range of issues and concerns have been raised and discussed throughout the development of the DWMP for the Arun and Western Streams. These include

• Some of the wastewater systems in the RBC are approaching their permit and capacity limits as a result of new development, so the permits will need to be reviewed with the Environment Agency
• There are numerous environmentally designated sites in the Arun Valley, including internationally designated sites. The water quality needs to be protected and improved so the species and habitats these sites support can be protected from further deterioration and enhanced
• Data sharing between multiple organisations is needed to promote closer working and co-create more sustainable, natural solutions to land drainage
• Private sewers are likely to be causing issues with infiltration and leakage
• Effluent reuse must be considered as a solution to reduce discharges to Langstone and Chichester Harbours
• West Sussex Council and other organisations are actively looking for potential natural flood management sites and ways to slow the flow of rainfall run off, including the use of Horsham Pond as a storage facility.

We are progressing these issues through the development of the DWMP as set out in our investment needs for the Arun and Western Streams. Further, we commit to working with others to co-develop and co-deliver schemes that meet multi-organisational objectives and which benefit the environment, our customers and communities.

We developed and ran a series of activities between 2020 and 2022 as we prepared our DWMP for the Arun and Western Streams. The dates and purpose of the various webinars, workshops, meetings on individual wastewater systems and interim consultation were as follows:

The regionally based webinars presented and discussed issues and information relevant across the whole or our operating region. You can view the presentations used in the webinars on our Who we’re working with page.

The presentations we discussed at the Arun and Western Streams workshops are below:

Workshop 1
Held in September 2020, participants discussed the findings of the risk based catchment screening and proposed additional planning objectives for the DWMP. Workshop Slides.

Workshop 2
Held in May 2021, participants:

1. discussed the results from the BRAVA risk assessments and the proposed investment strategy for the wastewater catchments within the River Basin
2. identified the generic options that should be explored to address the identified risks, and
3. discussed which wastewater catchments to progress through the Options Development and Appraisal stage of the DWMP. Workshop Slides.

Workshop 3
Held in March 2022, we reviewed and discussed the draft investment programme for the River Basin Catchment. This included the types of investment, priorities and timing for investment needs and the wider opportunities arising from the proposed investment in terms of partnership projects and catchment wide solutions providing multiple benefits. Workshop Slides.

You can view the findings from our interim consultation.