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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support her Department is providing for chalk stream protection in West Dorset.

Defra is supporting chalk stream protection in West Dorset through partnership delivery with the Dorset Catchment Partnership. This includes habitat restoration in the River Frome headwaters, improving soils and reducing pollution. The Environment Agency (EA) is conducting farm inspections and enforcing farming rules for water. Additionally, the EA is inspecting water company assets to ensure sustainable abstraction and treated effluent permit compliance.

Additionally, during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the Government made three commitments to help protect and restore chalk streams: To include explicit recognition of chalk streams in the new suite of national planning policies for decision-making, to amend statutory guidance to encourage chalk streams to feature prominently in Local Nature Recovery Strategies going forward, and to embed actions to improve chalk streams in the Water White Paper.