The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has published its second catchment partnerships report for the period 2014-15.
Defra delegated the powers to provide financial assistance to the Environment Agency in order to support the establishment and maintenance of partnerships across all 87 (and 6 crossborder) water management catchments in England.
The Environment Agency has administered the funding to charitable, benevolent or philanthropic institutions through the Catchment Partnership Fund (CPF). The aim of CPF is to deliver improved water quality to meet the objectives under the Water Framework Directive by establishing local partnerships within communities to identify the problems; agree priorities; and, elicit paid and voluntary action that supplements action by the Environment Agency to tackle the problems.
In the 2014/15 financial year, £2.2m funds were made available by Defra of which £1.8 million were used to support the role of catchment partnership ‘hosts’ to engage local communities and establish and maintain partnerships.
This is the second year in which CPF grants have been provided to organisations to carry out their role as hosts.
All of the partnerships established from previous rounds of funding continued. Some of the sub catchment partnerships merged together to tackle issues at whole catchment scale.
Work undertaken by partnerships during covered a wide range of issues, including farm run-off, sustainable drainage, river restoration, phosphates removal from a sewage treatment plant, river basin management planning and flood plain protection.
Click here to read The Catchment Partnership Fund: Environment Agency Summary Report 2014-2015 in full.
Sulzer has launched a new global Center of Excellence (CoE) for Water Treatment Solutions - the CoE consolidates Sulzer’s wastewater treatment expertise in a unified and global manner.
“SAS (Surplus Activated Sludge) is a bit weird and 
Owen Mace has taken over as Director of the British Plastics Federation (BPF) Plastic Pipes Group on the retirement of Caroline Ayres. He was previously Standards and Technical Manager for the group.
PureTec Separations, the Ledbury-based water treatment engineering firm, has appointed Dan Norman as its new Sales Manager – Water Process Systems, supporting the company’s continued growth in the UK and international markets.
Hear how Scottish Water has completed its £235 million Ayrshire Glasgow Resilience Project - customers across Greater Glasgow, Ayrshire and East Renfrewshire will now benefit from a more secure and resilient water supply.
Hear how United Utilities is accelerating its investment to reduce spills from storm overflows across the Northwest.
Find out more about the remarkable career opportunities on offer at WSP - scroll down to watch the inspirational video.