East Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy 2005/06

Data Analysis
5.53 The Environment Agency monitored the quality
of over 3,500km of water courses in the East
Midlands in 2005 and found that:
• 94% had good or fair chemical quality (1% worse
than previous year),
• 97% had good or fair biological quality (no change
from previous year),
• 58% were poor nitrate quality (1% better than
previous year),
• 61% were poor phosphate quality (2% worse than
previous year).
Policy Commentary
5.54 Water Quality in the East Midlands has shown a
significant improvement in terms of both chemical
and biological standards since 1990. In this time, the
length of river and canal achieving a good or very
good chemical quality, according to the Environment
Agency’s General Quality Assessment (GQA) scheme,
has almost trebled, with 60% (2100km) of the
3500kms of classified watercourse achieving the top
grades in 2005. Although relatively static since the
start of the new millennium, the past ten years has
seen an additional 642kms achieve the top quality
bands.
5.55 Although not as marked, the improvement in
chemical status is mirrored in biological quality, with
in excess of 2250kms of river being classified as good
or very good in the last survey.This represents a 60%
increase since 1990 and in excess of 30% in the last
decade.
5.56 The district’s rivers remain highly nutrient
enriched, however, despite a 15% reduction in the
total length of the GQA network recording high or
excessively high nitrate concentrations since 1995.
Over the same time period, phosphate
concentrations have remained very stable with the
majority of stretches falling being classed as highly
nutrient enriched.Water bodies in the East Midlands
are still eutrophic and characterised by high turbidity,
algae dominated, with no/few submerged aquatic
plants (oxygenators) and generally poor ecologically
- in some instances resulting in unfavourable
condition where SSSIs are concerned.
5.57 Under the England Catchment Sensitive
Farming (CSF) Initiative, changes in farm practices are
being sought to reduce diffuse water pollution from
agriculture.The region has three CSF priority
catchment initiatives and three CSF associate
catchment initiatives, all of which commenced in
2006.The Environment Agency has developed a
monitoring and evaluation framework to determine
whether the programme has achieved the objective
of raising awareness of diffuse water pollution from
agriculture, and encouraging early voluntary action
from farmers and land managers to tackle it.The
Regional Assembly’s Environment Group
commissioned a major study of soils in 2006 as part
of its study on landscape scale run off (‘spongy
landscapes’) and this will also feed into the
understanding of solutions to this problem.
5.58 The RSS policy on strategic river corridors is
now well accepted and assisted by guidance notes
issued to all Local Planning Authorities on a
suggested Local Development Document Core
Strategy Policy
(www.emra.gov.uk/publications/RPG_src.asp) which,
with the supplementary supporting information,
provides a helpful method of transition from the
strategic to local policy.
5.59 The policy was helpful in securing a 1.5Million
grant from the EU Interreg funding for a pan
European project, SPARC, administered in the Region
by the Environment Agency. Less well developed are
useful key indicators for measuring the success of
this policy.The policy seeks integrated management
of river corridors. Inevitably, therefore, single
indicators do not do the job but there are difficulties
in finding a suite of indicators without involving
excessive expense or unnecessary detail.
East Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy Annual Monitoring Report 2005/06
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