A summary of the river basin planning process the Environment Agency and others have followed in reviewing and updating the river basin management plans.

Part of the river basin management plan, updated 2022.

You can access each river basin district’s river basin management plan from River basin management plans: updated 2022.

  • 1. Introduction

    This section describes the content of the document.

  • 2. River basin management plans

    This section describes the aims of the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive (England and Wales) Regulations 2017, objectives for specific water body types, the river basin planning process and cost recovery.

  • 3. Defining and describing the water environment

    This section explains how the Environment Agency describes the water environment geographical units, and how we assess their current condition.

  • 4. Updating objectives

    This section describes the processes followed to review and update water body objectives and explains the approach to economic appraisals.