State of Our Rivers Report

Jump to summary for ↷  England  -  Northern Ireland  -  Ireland  -  Wales  -  Scotland 

Almost everything we do on land impacts our rivers. Rivers carry the chemical and physical fingerprint of their local catchments – the land area around rivers from which water drains. They have been polluted, channelised, fragmented by barriers and rarely still follow their natural course. Their current state reflects what we’ve done across their catchments over hundreds of years.

Some forms of pollution are obvious from the riverbank; plastic bottles and crisp packets bobbing in the water, brightly coloured single-use vapes nestled on the riverbed, wet wipes tangled in overhanging vegetation and streams of murky soil washed from fields or grey wastewater from combined sewage overflows (CSOs).  

But, looks can be deceiving. Even the clearest looking waters can contain microplastics, industrial chemicals, hydrocarbons, fertilizers and pesticides, and even pharmaceuticals. Untreated sewage spills blight most of our rivers, and even treated wastewater still contains a cocktail of chemicals like pharmaceuticals, pesticides from veterinary flea treatments, nutrients and household cleaning products when it is returned to our waterways.  

Getting a clear picture of the state of our rivers is not a simple task – and the issues lie in the availability of data. Across the UK and Ireland, the regulators in each nation monitor water quality and river health in different ways and at different times, making clear-cut comparisons or broad conclusions hard to draw.  

• Our rivers are not healthy – far from it.
• Things haven’t improved since our last report in 2021.
• More data is needed to truly understand the scale of the problems and deploy solutions.

This section explores what the data that we do have access to shows for each country. Much of the rest of the report will focus on England as data is more widely available for English rivers, but many of the pressures and threats that our rivers face also applies to the rest of the UK and Ireland.  

Use the map below to explore the current ecological health of the rivers in your local area. 

▬ High ▬ Good ▬ Moderate ▬ Poor ▬ Bad ▬ No data

In England, water chemistry, along with a range of other health measures, is assessed by the Environment Agency in accordance with the Water Framework Directive (WFD) – legislation introduced and still in force from when we were members of the European Union. Rivers are divided into many shorter stretches (known as river waterbodies) so that we can see how the health of a river changes along its length. Often the headwaters of a river are healthier than the stretches downstream, as the river gets polluted by different activities  as it travels downstream, through its catchment. Under the WFD, river health can be measured under two main categories which are combined to give ‘overall status’: chemical and ecological status.   

• Chemical health considers the presence (or absence) of a list of chemical pollutants using water sampling. 
• Ecological health looks more broadly at what’s living in the river, and how modified it is. The presence, absence and abundance of species is a good indication of the general health of a river. 

We know healthy rivers are vital - yet the latest health assessments show that still none of England’s river stretches are in good or high overall health:

• 0% are in good overall status
• 0% are in high overall status
• 23% are classed as in poor or bad overall status
• 85% of river stretches fall below good ecological standards; only 15% achieve good or above ecological health status 

England’s WFD data is published every three years, and the most recent results don’t paint a positive picture. Very little has changed – let alone improved – since the last data from 2019. Of the 3553 river stretches we have data for, just 151, stretches of river got better and moved up an ecological standard, and 158 actually got worse. Worryingly, river sampling has also decreased, with nearly 6% fewer river stretches receiving health classifications compared to 2019. 

When so many things make rivers sick, there are many reasons why they fail their WFD health tests, and many rivers will fail for more than one reason. We can look at these reasons in more detail and can compare the impact of different sectors on English rivers: 

• 62% of river stretches failed because of activities attributed to agriculture & rural land management (pollution from fertiliser or livestock) 
• 54% of river stretches failed because of activities attributed to the water industry (including treated and untreated sewage discharge, and abstraction of groundwater) 
• 26% of river stretches failed because of activities attributed to the urban and transport sector (such as urbanisation and transport pollutants)  
• 39% of river stretches have a failure for which the sector is under investigation (is not known)

•  ^{How did we calculate this? Please note that the figures in this infographic represent the percentage of all WFD waterbodies with at least one RNAG attributed to a sector/activity. That is, if a waterbody has one or more RNAG from a sector/activity it will be counted once for that sector/activity. Percentages include all waterbody types and all confidence categories.} 

The graph below shows the breakdown of sectors impacting river health in England. There are some brilliant projects improving river health on smaller scales, but when we look at the national picture, little has changed nationally since the 2019 investigations – farms, wastewater, towns and transport still have the biggest impact. Agriculture contributes towards nearly two thirds of river failures, impacting 2,337 river stretches; the water industry impacts more than half; and urban impacts and transport affect a quarter.

We’re interested in groundwater health too. Groundwater is all the water that is stored in the rocks beneath us. This is our best source of drinking water, as it typically is cleaner than surface water, it requires less treatment  – so it also has a lower carbon footprint. It also keeps our rivers flowing in the summer when there is less rain. In England, 63% of groundwater sites sampled were in poor overall health, and 55% were found to be in poor chemical health. In England, 30% of groundwater used for drinking needs costly treatment for nitrates, and this cost is passed on to customers in higher bills.

In 2022, when it came to look at chemical health, the Environment Agency gave all river stretches ‘Does not require assessment’ status. In 2019, every single river assessed in England failed the chemical health standards and a collection of chemicals called uPBTs are a key reason. The clue here is in the acronym: uPBT stands for ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic. These chemicals are found everywhere, remain in the environment for a long time, build up through the food chain, and are very harmful. The uPBTs that have been identified include mercury (now banned) which used to be in medicines, brominated diphenyl ethers (pBDE) used as a flame retardant, the now-banned tributyltin that used to clean barnacles from boats, and certain polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from burning wood or hydrocarbons. There are many chemicals that are still in use today which are emerging as pollutants of our freshwater too; for example, pharmaceuticals, fungicides and some compounds commonly found in pesticide treatments used on pets. 

Chemicals can persist in freshwater habitats for decades, so despite the lack of testing this time around, we can reasonably expect the chemical health of our rivers to still be very poor. Our analysis of government data showed that, despite being banned 15 years ago, levels of the toxic ‘forever’ chemical perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in freshwater fish in England is still found in concentrations on average over 300 times the levels deemed safe for aquatic life. 

In 2016, 97% of rivers ‘passed’ their chemical health test, yet when the testing methods were changed in 2019, all failed. We’ve learned more about how dangerous these substances are, even in tiny amounts, causing all rivers to fail. Learn more about the issue of PFAS (a group of toxic chemicals known as ‘Forever Chemicals’) in our waterways in the case study below.

100% of river stretches in Northern Ireland failed to meet ‘good’ overall status. 

Use the pie charts below to explore the overall and ecological health of Northern Ireland's river stretches.

• 0% achieved good overall status, and 12% were given either poor or bad overall status 
• Only 31% achieved good ecological status, and just 2 stretches achieved high ecological status, and
• Almost 70% failed to meet the requirements for good ecological status 
• 47% failed to reach good biological status, which measures the health of living things in the water
• 53% were given good or high general physico-chemical status, which looks at conditions that affect life in the river, such as temperature and nutrient composition 

In Northern Ireland, all rivers surveyed were given a moderate chemical status, and none achieved high status. Toxic chemicals in the water that come from plastic (PBTs), and mercury presence in the animal and plant life were common contributors to rivers failing to meet high chemical status. 

68% of groundwaterbodies in Northern Ireland achieved good overall status, and 29% failed to meet the criteria for ‘good’ chemical status. Human activity is almost always the reason for contamination of groundwater. Activities on land, like leaks from the sewerage system, spills from industry or urban activities, and the leaching of fertilizers and nutrients from agriculture, can all have negative impacts on groundwater.­ 

A number of activities can put pressure on rivers, causing them to become unhealthy, and each river can suffer from a wide range of pressures at the same time. We can group these pressures into sectors, and find out who the worst offenders are. The most recent data is from 2018, and in Northern Ireland, the agriculture and land management sector plays a huge role in river health - affecting nearly 300 of the river stretches assessed, followed by the water industry (141) and industry (97). 

Use the graph below to explore the actions that are causing our Northern Irish rivers to suffer, and see how this impact varies by industry. ↓

In 2023, vast blooms of toxic blue-green algae spread across Lough Neagh, caused by a combination of pressures such as agricultural run-off, sewage, and invasive species, the effects of which were exacerbated by underinvestment and the climate crisis.

Click the link below to find out more about the pollution in Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in the UK and Ireland.  

In Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency carries out the WFD water quality assessments. Overall health scores aren’t given, but we can still see the ecological health of river stretches.  

• Just over half of all river stretches (1,602 in total) achieved good or high ecological health status, and 17% are classed as in poor or bad ecological health. Compared to lakes, coastal and transitional waters, a far lower percentage of rivers sampled achieved high ecological status.
• Only 39% of rivers in Ireland reached good or high biological standards, which takes into account the health of things like the aquatic plants, fish, insects and other invertebrates that live in the water. These living creatures are directly affected by their environment, and their health can be used as an indicator of the overall condition of the river. 
• 94% of rivers in Ireland were not assessed for chemicals – monitoring was instead targeted around areas where chemical pollution was more likely. Of the 193 that were surveyed, 60% failed and 40% passed for chemicals. 

Pollutants in our groundwater – which often get there as a result of activities on land – eventually flow into our rivers. In Ireland, almost 92% of groundwater sites sampled achieved good groundwater chemical status, and 8% were graded poor.

Almost 50% of all rivers in Ireland fall below good ecological health standards, and there are many reasons why our freshwater ecosystems are suffering. The graph below shows some of the key pressures that Irish rivers are under, and how many river stretches are significantly impacted by each one.

Agriculture leads the way, affecting nearly 63% of stretches of river (1,023 in total). Altering a river’s hydromorphology by straightening, dredging or building with things like dams and weirs, as well as pollution from forestry, and from towns and cities, are also having an impact. 

(Content provided by  Afonydd Cymru )

In the latest round of Water Framework Directive (WFD) assessments in 2021, 44% of Wales’s river stretches achieved at least good overall status. When looking at just chemical assessments, there was a 94% success rate for good status.

These figures are often used to make favourable comparisons between the state of Welsh rivers and those in other parts of the UK, especially England. However, Afonydd Cymru (Wales’s version of The Rivers Trust) has concerns about the way in which assessments for WFD are being carried out in Wales. It believes that differences in waterbody status are more a reflection of differences in monitoring and reporting carried out by Natural Resources Wales, as opposed to any tangible environmental improvement.

Natural Resources Wales’s passive sampling programme provides data which indicates a wide range of chemicals at levels above safe thresholds. However, 455 waterbodies (out of the total of 714) were not assessed by the Welsh environmental regulator for “Priority Hazardous Substances” and 452 were not assessed for “Priority Substances”. Despite this, all were still classified as ‘High’ status (in the absence of monitored data).

According to Afonydd Cymru, the interpretation by waterbody in WFD assessments should therefore be updated to reflect a wider chemical failure than is being currently reported. The likely result would be a decline in chemical and overall WFD classification status, bringing the official health of Wales’s rivers much closer to those in other parts of the UK.

More information about the state of Welsh rivers can be found on the  Afonydd Cymru , website.

(Content provided by  Fisheries Management Scotland )

Fisheries Management Scotland’s member District Salmon Fishery Boards and Rivers and Fisheries Trusts are working to protect and restore our rivers. Scotland’s rivers are a precious national asset and in the face of the wild salmon and biodiversity crises we urge the Scottish Government, and all relevant Agencies are doing everything possible to ensure that our aquatic environment is protected and restored.

The proportion of river stretches assessed as being in good or better overall condition is now 57.2%, as found in SEPA’s classifications for 2022. This equates to an improvement in overall condition for 23 river stretches (to good status or better) since 2020.  SEPA’s Water Environment Hub  identifies rural diffuse pollution, man-made barriers to fish migration, modifications to physical condition of rural rivers, water use by hydropower and unidentified ecological pressures as the five issues which affect most river stretches in Scotland.

Water quality data collected by Rivers and Fisheries Trusts as part of the  National Electrofishing Programme for Scotland , has highlighted potential pressures from nutrient pollution, particularly in the north-east, central belt and Ayrshire coast, while anthropogenic acidification impacts appear to remain a localised problem in the south-west of Scotland. High nutrient loads and eutrophication impacts are likely to become an increasing problem under climate change when combined with low summer flows and high temperatures.

We can group some of the key things that are putting pressure on our river into three categories – habitat decline, water quality (pollution), and water quantity. We’ll explore the key  pressures  in some detail below, as well as the things that are  exacerbating  them.

This is far from a comprehensive list of all of the threats that our rivers are struggling with. There are many others which we’re also concerned about – the spread of invasive species, mining and some aquaculture practices, for example – which you can learn more about on our website.  

For centuries, we have demanded that rivers serve our needs, rather than their own. To get goods and people from A to B faster, we have straightened what was once wiggly, deepened what was once shallow, changed the direction of water flow, built on top of and around watercourses, and even dug new channels to run alongside rivers. To manipulate the speed and height of water, we’ve placed barriers such as weirs and locks at strategic points along a river’s course, exerting increasing control over an ecosystem that works best when allowed to fluctuate with natural conditions.  

Each of these actions has caused rivers to become less natural, and river health has declined as a result. What we now see is biodiversity loss, and landscapes which are unable to handle seasonal changes in water quantity. The irony is, after altering them to suit us, we’re now realizing that what we need most is to return to them their natural characteristics.  

There are barriers in all rivers in the UK and Ireland, that fragment the watercourse and hinder species migration. Atlantic salmon are a species that has been particularly impacted by the introduction of barriers to our rivers, as they present physical hurdles for them to overcome when migrating up/downriver. Click the button below to learn more about the plight of Atlantic salmon in the UK and Ireland, and how barrier removal can play a big role in their population restoration.

England’s rivers contain over 45,000 barriers. There are at least 1,682 barriers in Welsh rivers, Scotland’s rivers have 2,128, and Ireland’s have 33,000. The Wye is the least fragmented in England and Wales. Use the map of river barriers below to see how modified your local rivers are. ↓ The map shows the locations of barriers in the UK and Ireland, but there are thousands more which aren't yet recorded in the database.

On average, people in England and Wales used 146 litres of water per day in 2022, so each day a household of four could be using over 500 litres. This is high compared to some of our European neighbours, like France (128 litres pp) and Denmark (99 litres pp). All that water has to come from somewhere. In England we use around 14 billion litres of water per day, and will need 4 billion more by 2050. 68% of water used in the UK comes from rivers and surface sources, while 31% comes from groundwater reserves underground. Around 15% of all rivers and 27% of all groundwaters in England are ‘over-abstracted’.

Climate change and pollution are diminishing our supplies, and our reserves are predicted to decline in the future. Droughts actively deplete our freshwater reserves, while floods bring too much water which rushes off the land and through rivers too quickly to replenish our supplies. 

Abstraction puts huge pressure on freshwater environments, including chalk streams – a globally rare habitat of which England is home to 85% of the world’s total. The government estimates that abstraction from sensitive areas needs reducing by 800 million litres per day by 2027. If we continue at our current rates of water use, we are just a decade away from demand exceeding supply. We urgently need to bring down levels of consumption, which will require action on both an industrial and individual level. Universal household metering and clear labelling of water efficiency for appliances and products could play a major role in this. And with around 20% of water supply lost to leaks, upgrading and repairing infrastructure is essential so that we don’t abstract more than we need.  The graph below shows how we've previously used water, and how we risk demand exceeding supply with predictions for water demand rising. ↓

So many products of human existence end up in our rivers. For too long we’ve assumed that rivers will help us wash away problems, but in reality we continue to wash our problems into them and dramatically impact water quality. This jeopardizes wildlife and human health, as well as impacting the cost of cleaning up water abstracted from rivers for use in our homes, cities and industry. Find out more about some of the key pollutants ( nutrients ,  chemicals ,  urban run-off ,  sediments ) putting pressure on water quality below.  

Today, farming and the water sector are causing significant river pollution. And these sectors both contribute to a real challenge for our rivers - too many nutrients. Nitrate and phosphate in rivers and lakes disrupt the natural ecology and result in suffocating algal blooms. It's a huge challenge to river health, and one that is exacerbated by climate extremes and higher temperatures. 

Treated sewage ‘effluent’ which has been through a sewage treatment works or domestic septic tank system, frequently still contains high levels of nutrients and pathogens, and discharges continuously into our rivers, which has a significant impact on river health as well as posing a risk to human health.

In the UK, the systems which drain rain from our streets and take sewage from our houses are often combined in the older parts of our towns and cities. During periods of heavy rain, this system can get overloaded. To prevent sewage backing up into our homes, water companies are permitted to overspill untreated sewage into rivers during extreme rainfall events.  

This map shows the locations of treated and untreated sewage discharge locations across the UK and Ireland. Some countries have more available data than others.

Frequent overspills of untreated sewage are a warning sign, showing us that our sewerage system isn't working. Far too many untreated sewage overspills are happening each year: 300,763 spills were reported in England in 2022 alone! This represents what the water companies report to the government and is likely to be an underestimate because not all sites are monitored all the time, so the situation could be much worse.

While tougher regulation and enforcement is needed to make sure this trend doesn’t continue, heavier rainfall will make it even worse. More building developments will also exacerbate the problem because there will be more surface water and sewage for the sewers to cope with.  

Zoom into the map to see where the sewerage network discharges treated sewage and overflows of untreated sewage and storm water into rivers in England & Wales in 2022. ↓ 

 For more about sewage in England and Wales, visit the information pages on our website, which are updated every year in April .

Agriculture needs nutrients to grow our food, however if too many are applied (either from fertiliser or manure), then what the crops cannot use gets washed off the fields into our rivers and groundwater. As fertilisers are expensive, many farmers will use as little as possible, however, unless their use is targeted and timed precisely, they will end up in rivers. Manure from animals can also be an issue. Where animals are part of a mixed farming system the manure can be used by crops and improve soil health, they can be part of a healthy circular economy. However, large numbers of animals can create too much manure for the crops to use and the additional nutrients are washed off the soil. Reducing our meat and dairy consumption and eating locally grown products whenever possible can help. 

Hundreds of chemicals are found in our rivers, including pesticides, hydrocarbons, metals, personal care products, pharmaceuticals and plastics released from a wide range of sources including agriculture, industry, transport, and our own homes and businesses too. 

Consequently, not a single English river is in good chemical status. Many of the chemicals found in our fresh and coastal waters are not only toxic and bio accumulative (meaning they build up in the food chain), but they are persistent too. The toxic 'forever chemical' PFAS, for example, takes over 1,000 years to break down. A wealth of research shows that their presence has detrimental effects on aquatic life – affecting invertebrates, fish and even otters.  

The Rivers Trust, working in collaboration with the Wildlife and Countryside LINK Chemicals Taskforce, have recently analysed Environment Agency data on levels of just one of the many toxic PFAS forever chemicals – Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) – in English freshwater fish. Our work has revealed that PFOS levels in English freshwater fish are, on average, 300 times higher than the levels considered safe by the European Union.

Use the map below to explore this data. See where freshwater fish samples were collected and by how many times their PFOS levels would have exceeded the proposed EU safety threshold ↓ 

While the small freshwater fish analysed by the Environment Agency would be unlikely to be consumed, the levels of PFAS pollution found in them are a likely indicator of wider fish pollution and highlight the urgent need to monitor levels in the fish destined for our dinner plates.

To reverse this damage to our freshwater ecosystems, we urgently need to phase out harmful chemicals except for the most essential uses, and in areas where there is not yet enough evidence, we still urge strong precaution. We also need a substantial increase in resources to ensure that we monitor chemicals in water, soil and air more rigorously, to provide an alert system that triggers action and informs policy and legislation. With toxic chemicals building up in our rivers and posing risks for nature and, potentially, public health, it is critical that the Government acts now to create a bold and ambitious chemicals strategy.  

Pollution is a commonplace sight in and around rivers, and much of it comes from urban environments. We've likely all seen plastic bottles and bags, wet wipes and sanitary products, and even discarded shopping trolleys and bikes. As part of our first Big River Watch citizen science survey in 2023, 54% of surveys reported some kind of visible pollution, and 46% identified litter. UK households throw away 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging a year, and for many of us, all it takes is to visit our local river to see that a significant amount reaches our waterways. 

Once it finds its way into our rivers, plastic can become stuck in the river and causes problems for wildlife. Plastics break down into toxic chemicals and harmful microplastics which are essentially impossible to remove, and even wash downstream and into the ocean – rivers are a major pathway for plastic reaching our coasts. 

Road run-off is also very problematic. Pollutants built up on road surfaces – oils, diesel and petrol spills, and particles from tyres and roads wearing down – get washed into rivers during rain. Sometimes it appears as a blackish, oily sheen on the water surface. Urban wetlands, reed beds and other nature-based solutions can help intercept this runoff and reduce the pollution of urban rivers. Also, by holding water back, they can also help reduce the severity of storm overflows that discharge untreated sewage and other contaminants. Thames 21 (one of our Member Trusts) has an  online tool  which shows where the opportunities are to install nature-based solutions to tackle road runoff in London.

Sediment, from soil erosion or decomposing plants and animals, can be a very visible pollutant. In our water, sediments can make our rivers look murky – but there’s far more at stake than aesthetics. Cloudiness can prevent animals from finding food or ideal habitat, can stop aquatic plants from getting enough sunlight to be able to grow properly (if at all) and deposited sediment can smother fish spawning grounds and the insects they feed on. Sediment can clog the gills of fish, can build up in our storm drains which increases the risk of flooding, and it also means more processing and treatment is needed for drinking water abstracted from rivers. 

During rainfall all kinds of things get washed from the surrounding land into the river, including soil and sediment from nearby green spaces or farmland. In England and Wales 17% of our arable fields show signs of erosion and 40% are thought to be at risk. Damaged and degraded soils are more easily swept out of fields with rainwater, causing the loss both a critical natural resource for farmers and a significant store of carbon. In many places, farmland soil health has suffered over decades thanks to agricultural practices that prioritise short term profit over long term sustainability.

Soils are also damaged when pesticide use reduces beneficial microbes, and soil’s physical structure is damaged when it is ploughed or left bare over winter. Animals can also damage soil, especially when too many are on the land or when fields are wet. Taking better care of soil can help keep it in our fields and out of our rivers. Sediment moves through rivers with the water, so the rate of flow controls how much moves downstream. Slowing the flow of water with nature-based solutions like leaky dams, meanders and wetlands can help sediment settle at the bottom of the river and leave the higher parts of the water column faster.  

Poor regulation and enforcement across several sectors are making things worse. England’s sewerage system is not currently fit for purpose; high levels of nutrients in treated discharges and untreated storm overflows are causing big problems. Over the last few decades, Ofwat – the body responsible for financial regulation of England’s water and sewerage industry – have failed to ensure that water companies invested sufficiently to upgrade or even maintain water infrastructure. Now, delivering the necessary improvements at speed and scale to safeguard our rivers is a massive task. 

More regulation and enforcement are also needed from the Environment Agency (EA), whose enforcement activities make sure environmental rules are followed. However, government has cut EA’s environmental protection budget in half over the last 10 years. This means that the EA has failed to monitor, investigate pollution incidents and enforce legislation and rules designed to protect our water environment. This has included instructing EA staff not to attend lower-level pollution incidents, and requiring water companies to self-monitor and self–report on their own activities. While EA have recently hired new water and agriculture inspection staff and begun to increase water monitoring again, government funding is still well below historical levels. EA budgets need restoring, and government must provide good strategic direction for water regulation with a better balance between economic considerations and the environment. 

There are also limitations to the way we currently regulate chemicals. At the moment, regulatory monitoring only addresses around 50 chemicals – some of which were banned years ago. Yet there are hundreds of chemicals found in our rivers, many of which are currently used, and which are not regulated the same way even though there are concerns about their impact. There is also evidence that the UK is falling behind the EU in terms of regulating and authorising chemicals more generally. With toxic chemicals building up in our rivers and posing risks for nature and, potentially, public health, it is critical that government creates a bold and ambitious chemicals strategy that is fit for purpose. The new model for registering chemicals in the UK must, as a minimum, align with the EU’s REACH scheme and follow its restrictions as standard.   

What happens on land impacts our rivers, so addressing the way that we manage land – urban and agricultural – is essential. We’re in the middle of a water crisis, but we’re also tumbling into so many other crises – climate, housing, health, cost of living, biodiversity. Trying to solve just one at a time won’t work when all of these are tightly linked. In the UK, tackling them fundamentally comes down to how we manage our land. We need to talk about farming and the environment in the same conversation. Agricultural activities have been linked to a significant number of water health test failures, so we particularly need agricultural solutions that don’t lean heavily on chemicals including some fertilisers that pollute our rivers, and which work to restore biodiversity, habitat and soil health. 

But the UK’s transition out of the EU Common Agricultural Policy into the Environmental Land Management scheme is a challenge for farmers. There’s lots of uncertainty, making it difficult to enact change. The complicated current system makes it easy for farm businesses and land managers to feel lost in the system, and trickier for them to think long-term. We also need cross-sector regulation – we can’t just regulate the water companies or the farmers. We need a fair and transparent system where everyone understands what’s happening, and we are still waiting on government's promise to publish a Land Use Framework to help balance all the demands we have on the land – one that includes land use change for climate mitigation, achieving water quality and biodiversity targets, while also balancing the need to provide food and housing for all. 

To get the official health statuses for rivers in England the Environment Agency (EA) monitor water quality, fish, invertebrates, plant and morphology data. To monitor water quality; EA staff visit a site, take a sample, and send it off to a lab for analysis. Having reliable, consistent and long-term data on the health of our rivers is essential for seeing whether they are getting better or worse over time, and how any of our actions – whether we hope that they are positive or we think that they are polluting – are having an impact.

Over the last two decades, EA water monitoring has declined significantly. The graph below shows the total number of samples taken from rivers by EA staff each year. ↓  There’s an obvious dip during the pandemic when staff couldn’t get out to rivers, but overall we can still see a strong downward trend over time. Far fewer samples are being taken, from fewer locations – leaving large parts of our river network completely untested and vulnerable to pollution. At a time when we need more data to understand the state of our rivers, the EA are generating less and less. 

This trend is worrying. The EA's national sampling programme can tell us something about national trends in water quality, but it is not sufficient to diagnose the causes of the problems or effectively target plans for river recovery which are needed in every river catchment.  

We need a monitoring approach that is fit for today’s challenges, a fresh approach that makes better use of technologies such as continuous water quality monitoring sensors, that includes rigorous testing for emerging chemical pollutants and that empowers local communities by supporting robust citizen science. While government monitoring is reducing, more individuals and community groups are stepping up for their local rivers and taking part in regular sampling and surveying. Citizen science can help ensure that no river is left behind and volunteers can be additional eyes and ears on the ground. Identifying and reporting pollution can help ensure regulators are better equipped to take action to stop pollution and restore our rivers to good health.

Working with local CaBA (Catchment Based Approach) catchment partnerships across the country, communities can generate data that helps drive action on the ground to restore rivers. Community river monitoring is not only good for the health of our rivers, it has also been shown that actively engaging with nature can bring significant health and wellbeing benefits to those who take part. 

We can learn a lot about the health of a river by sampling the freshwater invertebrates (bugs) present, and comparing what we find with what we'd expect to find in that stretch of river if it was in good health. Find out more about how and why we sample river bugs in the case study below.

Met Office precipitation projections tell us that we can expect much wetter winters and drier summers across the whole of the UK. Much of this data isn’t available for the Republic of Ireland, but trends are likely to be similar. We’ll experience more intense storm events, with heavier rainfall causing more damaging floods, soil run-off and pollution.  We can also expect to see more severe periods of drought – particularly in the East and South of England – drying out our river basins and making pollutants more concentrated.

Between September 2023 and February 2024, the UK experienced 10 named storms, many of which brought significant rainfall and led to flooding events that put communities, lives and livelihoods at risk.

In this section, we’ll explore some of the solutions that are being used to tackle some of the big problems. While the existence and constant improvement of these solutions offers some hope, these issues can’t be tackled in isolation. We can’t work alone; Collaboration across private, public and third sector partners, including with those negatively impacting rivers, is essential. 

To restore nature and clean up rivers with minimal carbon and chemical footprints, we need to work with nature.

Below, learn about nature-based solutions and how we can harness natural processes to improve water quality and manage water quantity. ↓

Use the slider below to compare how a landscape and our infrastructure might look and function with and without nature-based solutions. The scenario with NBS, including leaky dams, sustainable drainage, re-wiggled rivers, restored peat and tree-lined streets can hold water far better and will be less susceptible to flash flooding.

We’re data and catchment experts, and we know that to give our rivers a fighting chance at a healthy and resilient future, working in partnership is essential. Management and restoration of the water environment needs a collaborative and cross-sector approach. It is vital that businesses, landowners, communities, government, local authorities, NGOs, academics, water companies, and regulators all have the chance to sit at the same table. For any hope of meaningful, long-term action for rivers, we must share knowledge, data, resources and funding, hold each other accountable, and continue to act on the timely restoration and better treatment of our waterways. 

The Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) embeds a collaborative approach to land and water management across England. Globally unique in its catchment-scale national coverage and framework of support, CaBA realises a range of environmental, social, and economic benefits. More than 100 CaBA partnerships have been set up across river catchments across the whole of England and cross-border with Wales and Scotland. They integrate the public and private sectors with civil society by working with a diverse range of organisations, including environmental NGOs, water companies, local authorities, government agencies, businesses, landowners, academia, and local community groups. 

CaBA’s collaborative approach brings local knowledge and expertise to the surface, empowers individuals, organisations and communities to take ownership of local issues, and provides the catalyst to for projects delivering cost-effective solutions on the ground. It includes improvements to water quality, reduced flood risk, building resilience to climate change, nature recovery, more sustainable businesses and, health and wellbeing benefits for local communities. CaBA partnerships also create a wealth of volunteer and citizen science opportunities that improve the local evidence base. The Rivers Trust movement is proud to be part of this collaborative approach in England and similar initiatives in the rest of the UK and Ireland.  

Our river catchments are facing too many challenges and pinpointing the issues and causes for poor river health takes a lot of time and money. But with monitoring undervalued as an investment in environmental protection, data missing and fragmented, and budget cuts, our evidence and understanding of a river’s health is often lacking. 

Citizen science has an important part to play when combined with other types of data. Through collaborative projects like CaSTCo, local communities are getting involved, combining citizen science with government monitoring to fill some of these knowledge gaps. Through projects like CaSTCo, citizen scientists are also actively testing the design of collaborative monitoring – frameworks where all the citizen science taking place can come together. The aim is to identify joint actions, find ways to fill in data gaps and increase our understanding of how climate change, biodiversity crisis and human activities impact our freshwater environment. 

In 2023, we launched a simple and accessible citizen science initiative, which allows communities to contribute to datasets on the health of their local river using their smartphones. Big River Watch shows how people want to take the time to observe, think and connect to their river, with over 3500 surveys collected in our first session last September. Now is the right time to power-up local communities with the tools and training to contribute their own data and share what they know, so we can make a real, long-lasting positive difference to the state of our rivers. Find out more about Big River Watch in the case study below.

Funding is required to support and deliver the solutions that our rivers need. Some of this comes in the form of government agri-environment schemes that reward environmental land management, but more is needed. To fill that gap, we can look to private finance. Environmental markets are an innovative approach to leverage and accelerate private finance to preserve and enhance our natural assets, by quantifying and measuring the ecosystem services they provide.

This can then provide opportunities for the private sector to invest in nature-based solutions that can reduce the risks to their operations and supply chains, as well as supporting climate change at a catchment scale by supporting land managers to put the right nature-based solutions in the right places to deliver a range of benefits for all. If you are a business who is looking for opportunities within environmental markets, please get in touch as our local Trusts have a pipeline of potential projects that are designed to deliver multiple environmental benefits. 

The  Wyre Catchment Natural Flood Management Project  uses nature-based solutions to reduce flood risk in the Wyre River catchment, upstream of Churchtown, using a blend of public and private finance. Learn more about monetizing ecosystem services, and this new model for paying for nature restoration in the case study below.

Our current system of environmental management is inefficient. While lots of good local action is taking place across the UK and Ireland delivering tangible local benefits it is not enough to deliver  large scale transformation changes at the regional or national scale. To address this, we must improve the way we manage water and land. At the moment, national governments make country-wide commitments and targets, while local requirements are met by catchment and council scale delivery. Our rivers need coordinated management looking at what is required across landscapes, river basins and between catchments, to make sure that we identify the most efficient solutions – ones that work together, rather than contradict each other.  

But, we currently lack organisations that focus on the middle, or regional, scale – where activity happening at the national and local scales is coordinated. This governance gap has become known as the ‘missing middle’. In some areas of the UK organisations have grouped together to fill this gap, driven by necessity, but this organic development of governance solutions doesn’t cover the whole country. We need government to build on the best of these examples to develop governance across the country. Organisations that have proven how it can work should be given the legitimacy and mandate to work this way, and new ones established where there is none. At this scale, truly holistic solutions are possible to drive the transformational change we need. 

While the existence and constant improvement of these solutions offers some hope, these issues can’t be tackled in isolation. We can’t work on our own; collaboration across private, public and third sector partners including those negatively impacting rivers, is essential if we stand a chance at restoring our vital waterways.

Many of our everyday habits have a water impact, so action for rivers can start at home. For most of us, the first step in supporting local river health is assessing the amount of water you’re using at home, and thinking about what is actually in the water that is leaving your house. Curbing our personal water use reduces the pressure on our rivers from abstraction, and keeping additional pollutants out of our wastewater helps minimise blockages in the sewage system, as well as reducing the solid and untreated chemical pollution that often reaches rivers through CSOs.  

In the bathroom Only flush the 3 P's (poo, pee and paper) down the toilet. Sanitary products and wet wipes should go in the bin – even the ones labelled as ‘flushable’. Return unwanted medicines to your local pharmacy instead of flushing. Do a leak audit; fix or replace dripping taps, make sure your toilet isn't leaking into the bowl and when it's time to buy a new one, opt for a dual low-flush option.   

In the kitchen Seek out energy and water efficient appliances and use certified plumbers to avoid misconnections. Put fat, grease and oil in the bin and not down the sink, to prevent blockages and overflows. Use phosphate-free detergents and soaps, check the small print of your cleaning product labels and stop using items that say ‘hazardous to aquatic life’, and don’t scrub your non-stick pans. A huge part of our daily water footprint is in the food we eat. Buying food that's local, seasonal, and certified for responsible production makes a difference, and meat production generally has a higher water footprint than cereals and vegetables. 

In the garden The actions you take in your garden can have a substantial effect on mitigating environmental impacts. Even a small garden can help to slow the flow of water to your local river, reducing pressure on drains and rivers during heavy rains. Increase permeability and allow your garden to act as a natural sponge by increasing native vegetation and avoiding hard paving and plastic grass. Water-wise gardening is especially important in drought vulnerable areas of the country. Get plants that need less water and minimise lawn cover if your area is prone to drought. 

Reduce pressure on drinking water by adhering to hosepipe bans, and using water butts to retain water for plant watering or car washing. Butts can also be used as a soak-away for rainwater to help localise and re-naturalise our water cycle; make sure they are empty before large rain events, so you can increase the storage capacity in your catchment and help prevent drains being overwhelmed.  Avoid using chemical fertilisers and pesticides: we already see high levels of these products ending up in groundwater, drains and rivers. If you’ve got pets, choose chemical-free flea and tick treatments where possible. Don't pour unwanted chemicals, including paints and oils, down the drain. 

Work together When it comes to community action, it’s often the case that the more boots on the ground (or wellies in the river) the better – there’s strength in numbers. You can get hands-on by joining a local catchment partnership, ‘friends of group’ or local Rivers Trust as a volunteer – you might find yourself planting trees, litter picking or gathering data as a citizen scientist testing water quality. Local groups are also starting to apply for bathing water status for popular river swimming spots. Let us know if you need help. 

Write to your local political representative on decisions that impact your local rivers and stand up for a cleaner environment. Use our handy tool at the end of this report to compile your email and find your local representative.

We’ve heard a lot about how government wants to tackle the Climate and Nature emergencies, but we’re still not seeing enough joined-up planning and delivery at pace. 2024 is a General Election year, which provides the ideal opportunity for government to renew and accelerate its environmental ambitions. We need to see government provide the funding and political will required to enforce our current laws, move forward with long-promised strategies around chemicals and land use, and rapidly roll-out Nature-Based Solutions to build climate resilience and support nature recovery.  

Invest in fair and effective regulation and enforcement to hold polluters to account and ensure that nobody is profiting from pollution. We need tougher regulation outlawing more polluting products, such as persistent chemicals, and we need to use our existing laws to fully enforce the polluter pays principle. Properly funding regulators and providing consistent political support for their role is essential to tackling high-profile issues like the sewage scandal and playing a leading role in the Climate and Nature emergencies.  

Mainstream nature-based solutions to build climate resilience and support nature recovery. Nature-based solutions can be lower in carbon, and deliver multiple benefits like flood risk prevention, pollution reduction, biodiversity restoration, and community health and wellbeing, making them more valuable. Government must support efforts to break down barriers to the roll-out of large-scale nature-based solutions, by establishing strategic guidance and regulatory frameworks and standards that incentivise business and regulators to confidently work with nature.  

Support and empower communities to play a part in monitoring river health, by integrating citizen science into a collaborative monitoring framework. We need a clear framework and reliable standards around citizen science so that this data can be trusted and used by decision-makers, leading to better management of our rivers. This doesn’t replace regulatory monitoring, but it adds better coverage, responsiveness and transparency, and can help target regulatory investigations. Support for CaSTCo could accelerate our work building the first national framework to enable communities to collect trustworthy river catchment data and share it openly.  

Enable holistic water management through catchment partnerships by increasing their funding and strengthening their mandate. The Catchment-Based Approach partnerships are already working around the country and provide a ready-made framework for a more holistic approach to managing our rivers and their catchments. They bring key sectors together to pool resources and expertise, integrate plans and co-design solutions. Reliable and increased levels of funding, as well as a clearer mandate to convene, would accelerate their work with farmers, business and local communities and deliver even greater social and natural benefits.  

Improve join-up and integration of the many plans and regulations that affect our rivers and their catchments. We need to take a more strategic and integrated approach that coordinates opportunities across the various water industry plans, flood plans, local nature recovery plans and catchment plans. Adopting an overall land use framework that is underpinned by nature-based solutions would help fill the gap between local and national planning.    

Businesses are part of the solution and must continue working collaboratively with their employees, supply chains and local communities to build a more resilient economy and reduce shared water risks, whilst pushing new and innovative solutions that go beyond governmental and regulatory requirements.   

Work & Report with water in mind   

Businesses are already setting science-based targets and reporting on their impact and dependence on nature through nature-disclosures such as TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures) and TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures). These reporting mechanisms provide a good opportunity to re-think and enhance sustainability strategies to include water use and efficiency, which will in turn help build resilience around rivers. There is a growing movement around Water Stewardship within business as the urgency to work together to protect this vital resource is fully recognised. Water stewardship enables businesses to identify and achieve common goals for sustainable water management with relevant stakeholders that share water security concerns from across a catchment.  

Make Commitments to Water Stewardship  

The UN gives businesses clear guidance under Sustainable Goal 6 to commit to water stewardship strategies. This calls for businesses to know, measure and reduce their impact on water – both at their own sites and across their suppliers. In the UK, the food and drink industry has developed the Courtauld 2030 commitment, in which the Rivers Trust are a lead partner, for collective action on water. Some companies are committing to “replenish” the water they use – this means returning an equivalent volume of clean water to the environment. This is an important contribution to the recovery of healthy rivers, estuaries and wetlands.  

Innovate  

More and more businesses are looking to set ambitious water and nature targets that go above and beyond regulatory requirements. Many agree that the standard requirements should be used as a baseline only, and that businesses should actually set targets that push boundaries and set the scene for new innovative solutions. New technologies such as AI, sensors, satellites and drones could be explored to help us develop bolder ideas for water use and efficiency. 

Missed any of our case studies or want to dive a little deeper into some of the ideas, issues and projects that we've discussed here? Catch up using the links below:

•  Blue-green Algae in Lough Neagh 
•  Innovative funding for nature-based solutions and flood management in the Wyre Catchment 
•  Opening the door to citizen science and the Big River Watch 
•  The plight of Atlantic salmon in the UK & Ireland 

•  Chemical pollution 
•  Mind the evidence gap: river health monitoring trends 
•  What can freshwater bugs (macroinvertebrates) tell us about river health? 

The State of Our Rivers is coordinated by The Rivers Trust and supported by partners and funding from CIWEM and The Rivers Trust Foundation for Water Research (FWR) Legacy Fund.