Supply of ENV Agriculture WR Resilience

The Environment Agency's National Framework for Water Resources, published in March 2020, explored England's long-term water needs, setting out the scale of action needed to ensure resilient supplies and an improved water environment. The framework marked a shift towards strategic regional planning, where five regional groups form regional plans to build water resilience.

In a joint letter from Defra, the Environment Agency, and Ofwat to Regional Groups on 11 January 2023 we confirmed the next round of regional water resources planning. A refreshed national framework is currently being prepared, which will set out expectations for the next round of regional plans.

The refreshed national framework will present a strong direction for improving multi-sector inclusion in planning for future water needs.

At the Farm to Fork Food Summit (May 2023) the Prime Minister made commitments around improving water resources planning for the agriculture sector and followed this up with a further commitment at the NFU conference (February 2024). From these commitments Defra have supplied funding to the Environment Agency to support agricultural water resources planning and resilience. Part of this funding is to be supplied to the Regional Groups with the purpose of developing their capacity to provide input to the suite of agriculture projects which will help improve water supply resilience. These include projects associated with the recently announced Government scheme to screen Local Resource Options. Government launches fund to help farmers manage water resources - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Specific Objectives/Deliverables

In order to empower Regional Groups and build the capacity of the agricultural sector to build knowledge of the resilience of their catchment, we are aiming to provide Regional Groups with the funding to carry out the following actions:

• Offering Regional Groups the option to bid for additional budget for discrete agriculturally relevant projects, which can be achieved within this financial year (24/25). These bids should thoroughly outline the proposal, timescale and resources required, and ultimately how the project will feedback into, or how it would be integrated into the Regional Plan.