NFU chief’s frustration at lack of water progress

A year on from NFU’s Water Summit with then Environment Secretary Steve Reed at Rachel Hallos’ dairy farm overlooking an almost empty reservoir near Ripponden, the union’s President Tom Bradshaw has spoken of his deep sense of frustration over progress.

Speaking at the summit, which was held in a cow shed, Mr Reed underlined the need for sweeping changes if the mounting issues consumers and farmers are facing over both water quality and quantity were to be tackled.

However, he told the key industry and public sector figures the summit represented "a moment of immense change”.

The summit came as Yorkshire farmers raised fears for their crops as their abstraction licences ran low and figures revealed while issuing a hosepipe ban Yorkshire Water’s average leaks equated to losing over 275 million litres of water a day.

Describing this year’s exceptionally early harvest as “very worrying”, Mr Bradshaw told the Yorkshire Post: “There doesn't seem to be the urgency that is needed. We're going through the warmest summer on record. Last year was a warm, hot dry year. We had so much rain in January and February. If we had the ability to store that water, if we had dynamic abstraction licensing so whenever you have excess water you can take that water out and store it, if we had permitted development rights for reservoirs then you would be able to transform the water system.

"All too often computer says no, rather than how can we make this happen? That's the mindset change we need.”

Mr Bradshaw was speaking ahead of the publication of the Government’s response to the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee report Surviving drought: reclaim the rain.

The inquiry heard an Environment Agency warning that by 2055, daily public water demand could exceed supply by five billion litres – equivalent to 2,000 Olympic swimming pools every day.

It recommended working to better understand the problem through better impact data and drought monitoring and called on the Government to conduct a full environmental and economic assessment of drought to weigh the cost of inaction against the value of resilience.

It also called for supply and demand to be better balanced through a “whole of society approach” to drought.

The report stated: “Taking the fight to drought is not just the responsibility of Government. All sections of society, be it local government, industry, agriculture or individual consumers, must contribute to the balancing of demand and supply.”

It stated the Government should prioritise regulatory changes to facilitate the construction of local resource reservoirs and increase the flexibility of abstraction.

The Government accepted most of the peers’ recommendations, including expediting abstraction licensing, but rejected its calls to expand the remit of internal drainage boards or to make water companies statutory consultees on all major planning decisions.

Committee members Tory peer Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and zoologist and former Food Standards Agency chairman Lord Krebs both described the Labour administration’s response to the report as “disappointing”. He said: “As we spiral towards another drought with wildfires burning, crops suffering, reservoir levels falling and hose pipes bans being put in place, the Government must act urgently to secure water now and for the future. Otherwise, as our report warns, the taps could run dry.”

Baroness McIntosh said the parliamentary inquiry had concluded farmers are in a position to help to reduce the impacts of climate change. One way of doing that, she said, would be by storing water in times of plenty. The former North Yorkshire MP added: “Farmers want on-farm reservoirs and the Government says it favours no barriers to that, but when you speak to farmers it’s clear there are all sorts of barriers.”

Baroness McIntosh said the report had found even small scale developments could upset the balance of a river catchment.

She said: "What I was disappointed with was that farmers want to play a main role in the management of the area’s catchment system and water management generally, but Defra rejected our call that internal drainage boards should be statutory consultees on major planning applications. Even 30 homes in the wrong place in a catchment can upset the balance.”