Consultation on the Stour river basin catchment

We specifically asked about:

• Our Strategic Environmental Assessment Scoping Report
• Our selection of wastewater systems to take forward into the Options Development and Appraisal stage of the DWMP in the first cycle, and
• Our developing plans on each of the 11 river basin catchments.

Our report on the initial DWMP consultation is now available.

When we consulted on the developing plans for the Stour river basin catchment you told us that the key issues we needed to take into consideration were:

• The rising trend of pollution in the groundwater along with groundwater vulnerability has not been picked up.
• There are a series of smaller wastewater treatment works which have high or no consent levels for nutrients whilst there has been lots of cumulative development. This, combined with low levels of monitoring, means there are risks to the catchment which may be missed or misunderstood.
• There are significant nutrient risks and impacts on the Stodmarsh which will likely worsen with the levels of growth that are planned. Improved data and monitoring is required to develop an evidence-based approach to neutrality and ensure there is capacity in the systems.
• There are too many catchments in the ‘improve’ category.

How we responded to the issues raised during the workshops and the preliminary public consultation is set out in our Register of Stakeholder Comments.

We held a full 12 week public consultation on the draft Regional (Level 1) DWMP between Monday 13 June and Monday 05 September 2022. Our Statement of Response to the issues raised is published on the home page of our website, and a report and analysis on the consultation is published on the Have your say page.