Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of asking citizen science programmes to (a) test water quality and (b) provide that data to his Department.

We recognise the value of citizen science data, and the additional insight it can provide to complement monitoring and assessment work conducted by the Environment Agency (EA).

The EA is delivering the first phase of a multi-year citizen science project: Supporting Citizen Science. The project is working with partners across England to explore how the EA can best work with citizen science groups to observe and measure the environment, alongside their ongoing monitoring to further increase understanding of water quality.

Citizen scientists are not being asked to test water quality on behalf of the EA: the focus is instead on citizen science data providing supplementary insight.

The EA is working with catchment partners to provide data management guidance to support citizen scientists in the collection and storage of data to improve our understanding of the water environment.