Who and why

One of the aims of the Catchment Management for Water Quality  Project is to support the development of a community of practitioners, policy makers and scientists to develop future questions and encourage joint working. The Community Forum was established to help identify emerging questions relating to policy development and implementation in the areas of water and air pollution through consultation across the community.

Stakeholders from a wide range of organisations involved in catchment management from policy, practice or research perspectives took part in the Community Forum:

• Governments of England, Wales and Scotland;
• Policy makers from Defra, SEPA and DoE Northern Ireland covering aspects including water, soils, air, economics, flooding, ecosystems and biodiversity, climate change and farming, amongst others including the Forestry Commission
• The research community e.g. NERC, Universities;
• Regulators: EA, NE, SEPA, NRW, NIEA etc. covering a range of catchment management technical areas e.g. modelling, flooding, land management etc.
• 3rd Sector organisations: e.g. representatives from NFU, CLA, Scottish Agricultural; College, Angling Trust, Rivers Trust (and the CaBA network), WWF, RSPB, CRT etc.
• Water Industry: contacts from the major water companies in the UK, as well as UKWIR and DWI.

Getting started

Initial consultations were held with a range of stakeholders, including policy experts on water, soils and biodiversity in Defra. Similar discussions were held with Scottish and Welsh stakeholders. Telephone interviews were held with a range of representatives from the EA, NE, and 3rd sector organisations such as the NFU, the RSPB, WWF, the Rivers Trust, and water industry contacts. The pre-consultation discussions involved 47 people across 14 different organisations across the various sectors involved in water quality issues. The questions raised through in these interviews formed the basis of discussions with the wider stakeholder community in the Community Forum Workshops. 

The Forum Management Group

The Forum Management Group (FMG) consists of 18 people from 13 organisations involved in the larger community forum. This smaller, more focused stakeholder group provides guidance and advice in the selection of questions, case studies, models and data that are included in CaMMP.