Working with others – East Hampshire catchment

• Hampshire County Council
• East Hampshire District Council
• Eastleigh Borough Council
• Fareham Borough Council
• Gosport Borough Council
• Havant Borough Council
• Portsmouth City Council
• The Environment Agency
• Natural England
  • The East Hampshire Catchment Partnership and member organisations including:
  • The South Downs National Park Authority
  • The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust
  • The South East Wildlife Trust
  • Groundwork
  • Portsmouth University
  • Solent Forum
  • The Country Landowners Association
• 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 East Hampshire. These include:

• The condition of the water environment around the Solent is a concern. There are important shellfish and recreational waters in coastal areas. There is a duty under the Habitat Regulations to demonstrate no significant effect on Special Protection Areas (SPAs). Peel Common discharges into Portsmouth Harbour SPA. Irrespective of the proportion of impact from wastewater treatment all nutrient related issues need to be addressed by working in partnerships with landowners, users and local authorities.
• There is high groundwater across the catchment and coupled with surface water flows into the sewers means there are a number of flooding hotspots in urban areas.
• Solutions to surface water runoff into the sewers such as diverting the flows into available watercourses, and potential locations for SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) to slow the flow in urban areas must be found by working with others. Several possibilities have been
• highlighted including in Portsmouth, ‘green’ areas in Fareham and Gosport, and at the Rudmore motorway roundabout.
• Significant growth is required in Portsmouth around Fareham and north of the motorway. Portsmouth City Council is negotiating whether this can be absorbed by surrounding authorities. The capacity of the wastewater infrastructure needs to be reviewed in light of future schemes.
• Saline intrusion is already an issue in coastal areas and the risk and impact of sea level rise must be considered in future cycles of the DWMP.
• There is support for the water recycling scheme at Peel Common
• Both Budds Farm and Peel Common should be considered for a potential ‘change’ strategy in future DWMPs. Decentralisation are possibilities although all potential schemes must ensure the issues are not simply displaced elsewhere.

We are progressing these issues through the development of the DWMP as set out in our investment needs for East Hampshire. 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 East Hampshire. 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. The presentations used in the webinars are available on our ‘Who we’re working with’ page of the website [link]

You can view the presentations used in the webinars on our Who we’re working with page.

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 April 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.