Catchment Coordinator Role – experience from Lower Wear Pilot, Mar 2012
Evaluation for the catchment plan
- Roughly 50% of my current time is spent undertaking evaluation to determine priority issues and actions to feed into the catchment plan.
- This includes working with RSU, internal teams and AEP to interpret WFD information and evidence the EA owns to determine what the priority actions should be for the catchment plan. This is currently being undertaken for the 15 water bodies prioritised for the pilot and additional water bodies that are connected and potentially impact the status of these 15. This work at some point will need to be upscale to the same exercise fore the whole catchment.
- An important aspect of this evaluation is agreeing priorities between different teams and improving our internal evaluation processes to align different work streams to deliver multiple benefits.
- Also, there is further work need to ensure that outcomes from completed investigations are turned into actions on the ground and have ownership from a relevant team. At present it is difficult to determine how this process is working.
- My role is very reliant upon the evaluation and analysis of WFD evidence from RFF and Investigations database to inform the catchment plan. This is mostly undertaken by Jacqui McPake in AEP. If more time were available in the role this could be used to improve technical knowledge of these databases and provide greater resilience in the team.
- A key challenge for this pilot so far is how to use other people’s evidence to inform the catchment plan and our own WFD investigations and translating our own evidence in a meaningful ways for others to act on. Evaluation of this information is time consuming and it is still unclear how some of this can be used differently, such as; to inform water company plan, response to NIRS incidents, Council activity.
Engagement for the pilot
- The remainder of time, roughly 50%, is taken up through targeted internal and external engagement for the pilot and catchment plan.
- A large part of this initial engagement has been to establish a steering group to work together to develop a catchment plan. This is essential to ensure the plan, and any actions in it, have ownership from relevant organisations.
- In addition to this further time is taken up through engaging with local community groups and organisations to determine their aspirations for the water environment and to obtain local evidence they may have of water quality issues. This work is supported by my WWO mentor on an ad-hoc basis.
- More communication support would be required to coordinate the production of plans for any additional catchments. This element of the role needs further work to ensure sufficient time is agreed and set aside with comms teams to support catchment coordinators, such as for production of newsletters, web pages, planned local engagement. There is a reputation risk if we are actively communicating with different communities/groups and asking for information which we then do not act upon – these new relationships require time invested to sustain and demonstrate progress through the pilots.
- Establishing a very clear engagement plan should be a key task for developing any additional catchment plans and should be done up front with support from comms.
- The pilot has required me to communicate with a number of key stakeholders (water companies, other Defra body organisations, LAs) at different levels to identify and agree priority issues and actions to for the plan. In doing so there is a risk that organisations are receiving different messages from different parts of the business. Further comms work is required to manage this risk and ensure different internal teams are not giving conflicting messages e.g. AEP, EIP team, REP, SEP.