Government must follow Cunliffe recommendations and then go further to fix failing water system

3 June 2025

Environment groups are calling for bold urgent action from the Government in response to the National Water Commission’s interim report released today.

The public are rightly outraged by the state of England’s waterways. The Independent Water Commission has exposed failings in water company governance and financial controls, shortcomings in political planning and prioritisation, and a lack of cross-sector coordination and accountability for environmental management.

Charities are calling on the Government to start work now on vital reforms that will cut pollution and restore nature. They highlight that creating a new Regional System Planner – as recommended by Cunliffe – will take time. To ensure all sectors responsible for water pollution can play their part and be held to account, the Government should commit now to setting up this new body.

In other areas, the interim report stops short of final recommendations. However, it clearly recognises that water companies need stricter controls to ensure they work in the public interest and cannot profit at the expense of the environment. The Government must introduce new regulations with robust public interest tests and ensure civil society and environmental voices are properly heard in decision-making.

Some steps can and must be taken immediately, while others require a bold Water Act to deliver long-term, legally enforceable reform. The group make the following recommendations:

Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “This interim report is a clear signpost, not a finishing line. The public are rightly angry about pollution and regulatory failure, and nature is in crisis. The Government must start work now to put in place a Regional Systems Planner with powers to align planning and spending decisions to restore river catchments.

“Even where the Commission has yet to make final recommendations, the findings of failings suggest a clear direction of travel. Politicians must stop equivocating and set clear strategic direction for environmental recovery. Strong, enforceable targets are needed for water quality that can be applied across sectors. Where in the past polluters have got away with profiteering, public interest tests must be built into every layer of operations and governance with consequences for failure.”

Quick wins:

Wildlife and Countryside Link is calling for the immediate implementation of several key proposals:

• A Catchment Delivery Fund via the upcoming Spending Review to support a catchment-based strategic approach.
• An updated Strategic Policy Statement (SPS) for the water system as whole, setting out a defined and measurable vision for a clean and healthy environment, and a plan for the action required across regulators and sectors to get there.
• Urgently increase core funding for regulators to strengthen enforcement, monitoring, and ecological oversight.

Long-term reform:

• Develop a long-term plan that joins up all Government departments (especially finance and health) to complement short-term goals like ending sewage pollution in rivers.
• Create a National Water Strategy with a legally binding overarching target for water, a clear delivery pathway, and milestones for pollution reduction, sustainable abstraction, and ecosystem health.
• Strengthen catchment governance by giving statutory roles, secure funding, and clear duties to catchment partnerships.
• Retaining and strengthening the Water Framework Directive: the WFD is crucial for driving joined-up action to improve the health of the water environment. Any reform of the regulations must be to increase ambition and improve implementation, not to dilute protections or to move the goalposts. Instead, reform should strengthen accountability, bring the whole water environment into scope, improve indicators, and raise ecological ambition – not deregulate.
• Properly resource and reform water regulators so they can lead recovery efforts, including a legal nature and climate duty for Ofwat and the Environment Agency, backed by stronger powers in a second Water Bill.

Mark Lloyd, CEO of The Rivers Trust, said: “Water is fundamental for nature’s recovery, for the growth of the economy, for the health and security of communities and for life itself. We will press the Commission over the next month to shoot for the stars rather than the moon in its final report. We will then expect to see the Government move swiftly and boldly to realise this high level of ambition.”

James Wallace, CEO of River Action, said: "We only have one chance to get it right. The public mandate for change is overwhelming and so is the urgency. What comes next must be decisive, enforceable, and in the public interest. We urge Sir Jon Cunliffe to give us more, much more. Nothing short of a systemic overhaul of how water companies are owned, funded, operated and regulated will do."

Ali Morse, Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts said: “The Commission’s interim report emerges at a time when environmental protections are under threat from proposed planning laws, and budgets for nature look set to be slashed. This doesn’t look like the actions of a Government that is serious about restoring our chalk streams, or averting the extinction of water vole and Atlantic Salmon. To convince us otherwise, we need to see Government responding with measures that ensure water companies prioritise the health of rivers and seas, that past harms are made good, that other sectors too play their role, and that environmental regulators are equipped and supported to do their jobs. Only this will ensure that we have a healthy, thriving water environment that society and nature can both benefit from.”

Giles Bristow, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Ending the pollution crisis in our wild waters was an election issue acknowledged on the steps of Downing Street by the Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This report clearly identifies a broken privatised water system but stops short on systemic solutions to fix it. Until it is replumbed to prioritise the public health and the environment over profit for investors, an angry public will continue to swim and surf in a deluge of sewage that is destroying our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. We need tougher recommendations to government in the final report to help fix this system for good!”

Read more in our evidence to the Water Commission here: Blueprint for Water response - Independent Water Commission Call for Evidence.