With the recent publication of the CLA’s ‘Enabling the Countryside to Thrive’, which sets out their vision for agricultural reform in Europe, which states an aim of “improving efficiency in the use of water while ensuring that land managers receive a fairer allocation”, we take a look at the impact of the upcoming decisions following the consultation document on the Water Abstraction Licence Reform for England and Wales.
While the consultation closed on the 28th March 2014, it seems that many of the issues raised may have been lost in the press as announcements on the CAP and flooding issues dominated the front pages. This reform has been coming for some time, after the UK Government committed to a reform of the current legislation, first introduced in the 1960’s, in the Natural Environment White Paper, published in June 2011. With the requirement for, and reliance on, water expected to increase due to our growing population, and a more variable climate bringing doubt over the future availability of water, a more sustainable system for the management of rivers and aquifers is much needed.
Under the current system, many catchment areas have no spare water that can be allocated for further abstractions due to a requirement to protect the environment. If water supplies are to become tighter, and climate change leads to dryer seasons, the impact of limited water abstraction in agriculture could be devastating to the industry.
The Government intends to replace existing systems of licencing with new abstraction permissions. This would mean seasonal conditions in licences and separate licences for winter and summer abstractions would no longer exist. Instead permissions would contain specific conditions linking access to water availability. It is expected that this would allow higher flows to be abstracted throughout the year, but would restrict abstraction during low river flows.
This is raising suggestions that farms should consider increasing their water storage facilities, allowing water to be drawn and stored during high flows when water can be abstracted freely for use when river flows are especially low and permission is restricted.
The reform will also change the mechanism for trading water abstraction licences. The governments focus in this areas “is to make it quicker and easier to trade water so that, at times and places of particularly high demand and low availability, we are getting the most value out of our water and not wasting any that could be used.”
It is currently a very laborious task to trade abstraction licences, with it often taking three or four months for a trade to be completed. By having a more efficient trading system it will hopefully allow for quick trades of licences to coincide with individual requirements. In this way farmers will be able to buy and sell abstraction licences on the anticipated requirement for the forthcoming period and therefore not sit on an unused allocation as an insurance measure. This should then free up abstraction opportunities of others in that catchment.
