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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support is available to local environmental groups undertaking citizen science river testing.

The Environment Agency (EA) recognises the value of citizen science data, and the additional insight it can provide to complement its monitoring and assessment work.

With Spending Review funding, the EA is collaborating with citizen science groups in observing and measuring the environment. The data that is captured complements the EA’s own monitoring efforts and further increases understanding of water quality.

This collaboration is already creating strong relationships with citizen science groups, and improving data integration. The recently published Technical Advisory Framework guides best practice in citizen science monitoring which can be found on the Environment Agency Water Hub. To get involved with citizen science including river testing it encourages all interested communities to contact their local catchment partnership - details on how to do this can be found in the Technical Advisory Framework.