Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment his Department has made of the impact of water abstraction on chalk streams.
Restoring England's internationally important chalk streams is a Government priority. The Environment Agency (EA) continually assesses and monitors ground water levels that impact chalk streams. This long term monitoring has shown that water abstraction is potentially having a negative impact on a third of all chalk rivers. It is because of this that an updated assessment of all of England's rivers will be included in updated River Basin Management Plans to be published later this year.
The EA has been working with the Chalk Stream Restoration Group to identify and address the issues that are preventing chalk streams from being in good ecological health. A Chalk Stream Restoration Strategy was published in 2021 and government will publish its response to the Strategy later this year.
The EA works closely with water companies on Regional Water Resources Plans, to set out how abstraction impacts on the environment can be reduced, and also how population growth and climate change can be accommodated without causing environmental deterioration. We expect chalk streams to feature in this work. Regional Water Resources Plans will be consulted on this autumn.