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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what length of waterbodies is being removed from the current round of river basin management planning; and what assessment her Department has made of the effects on wildlife of removing those waterbodies.

Under the EU Water Framework Directive, ‘water bodies’ are the geographical units used to report the current quality of the water environment and set legally binding water body objectives. They are used in reporting progress to the European Commission on the implementation of the Directive.

There are minimum size criteria for the size of water body that must be included in the plan. The updated river basin management plans that the Environment Agency will submit to the Secretary of State for her approval in the autumn will contain about 29,200 miles of river water bodies. This is approximately 1200 fewer miles of river water bodies, excluded because of their small size, than in the current river basin management plans.

While the smaller river water bodies will not be reported in the plans, they are important and provide many benefits for people and wildlife. The laws protecting the quality of the water environment and the wildlife it supports apply to all rivers, regardless of whether they are in the river basin management plan.