Linda Richards is the chairman of the Wetherby and Easingwold Conservative Association and a former Leeds City Councillor.
Just over two years since I first wrote in Conservative Home announcing my campaign to get a stretch of the River Wharfe near Wetherby officially designated as a bathing water, and I am delighted to say that these efforts have not been in vain. DEFRA has approved the application. With this year’s bathing season now officially underway, we need many more designated bathing waters up and down the country.
The process has not been as linear as perhaps these two articles will make it seem and rather than representing an end, with an official designation to our name, the real work is only just beginning. Our efforts join a national mission of extraordinary effort to clean up our rivers.
For members of Wetherby and Villages Clean River Group, the last two summers have been spent in and around our local bathing waters, counting the number of bathers we see in the water during the official English bathing water season. Demonstrating demand is an integral part of the application process.
Once designated, the Environment Agency must regularly monitor the quality of the water and publish the results throughout the bathing water season. It will be bathers benefiting from this data, providing them with information about where they are seeking to swim.
Higher quality data is important because the actual threats to water quality can differ across different rivers. Better understanding of the Wharfe’s levels and sources of water impurities then empowers those responsible (DEFRA and, in our case, Yorkshire Water) to act upon the findings by investing in the necessary solutions.
This is followed by a whole load of community engagement to show support for a bathing water among those who would be impacted by the designation, as well as a willingness to play their part in improving the quality of the water for those bathing in it.
From this whistle-stop tour through the application process it should be becoming clear that the current system for designating bathing waters is far from perfect. People must already be swimming in the water in order for the designation to be approved. Only once it is approved can steps be taken to improve the water that people are already swimming in. It is a catch-22, pure and simple, and one of which the public is very aware
I therefore welcome the Government’s decision to review the existing regulations and hopefully make some improvements to it, to the benefit of many community campaigners and their bathers. I also welcome Selaine Saxby MP’s bill to roll monitoring out to the entire year for bathing waters, to better reflect actual bathing behaviours as the reality is that rivers are not just summer season, but all year resources being used ina variety of ways
Designation in and of itself is not a silver bullet, but it is one part of the solution. It is impossible for the necessary improvements to happen overnight but it is an important part of the process of managing and caring for our beautiful River Wharfe.
The application process has been a wonderful community effort reflecting the importance of the Wharfe to the lives of all residents both in the town and surrounding villages. It has also been an example of positive campaigning at its finest: we recognised a problem and we took the necessary steps to actually do something about it.
This is exactly what is happening at the national level too. A decade ago, Richard Benyon recognised our lack of data regarding storm overflows and, as a minister, decided to do something about it by rolling out monitors across the river network. We have gone from just seven per cent of coverage in 2010 to 100 per cent as of December last year. By comparison, Scotland is still at four per cent coverage.
With this data we now understand the extent of the problem and can act accordingly. Again, the government has been doing so through its Storm Overflow Discharge Reduction Plan, uncapping civil fines for water companies, and setting legally-binding targets to reduce certain water pollutants.
However, we still have much more work to do. Sewage is only part of the problem in our rivers. Rivers like the Wharfe also face increasing pressure from chemicals, microplastics, and runoff from roads and fields. We need to start addressing the issue of pollution at the river catchment level, right back to the source and all the land along the way, rather than just focusing on the pollutant of the day at the end of its journey to the river. This more holistic approach will help us clean up the water once and for all.
Clean water can also offer a route to political success – parties that put forward a strong narrative on the environment can reap the rewards. In the recent council elections, the Greens took more seats from the Conservatives than from Labour. In many parts of the country, they are the opposition we face and we need to start taking them much more seriously. This is certainly also my experience in Wetherby. It is a message which needs to be repeated regularly to the public that Conservatism has strong thread of environmental action and care for the community. Too often the assumption is that it is absolutely not something which is at the heart of Conservatism. But we need more than narrative; we need action to protect and restore our natural environment. Conservatives must be seen to be doing positive environmental projects with their local communities.
Conservatives at the national and local level have been doing great things to restore the health of our rivers, but nobody seems to know about it and we face a tide of misinformation and scare stories. We need to be loud and proud about our environmental achievements if we have any chance of pruning the so-called “Green Hedge”. Submitting a bathing water application is one of the ways we can do that and kickstart a process for improving our rivers.