On Monday this week, WRT was very pleased to have the opportunity to host a meeting with Dan Rogerson MP (Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and representatives from DEFRA, the Environment Agency, the Rivers Trust and South West Water.

Comment from our CEO

Jonathan Bailey, Chief Executive of the Trust, said, “The Catchment Based Approach provides a great opportunity to bringing together local people’s enthusiasm, good leadership and both public and private sector funding to make real improvements to our local environment. We can reduce flood risk, improve water quality and improve people’s health and well-being by adopting a catchment wide approach. The visit by Dan Rogerson was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of the environmental and social benefits an integrated catchment approach can have.”

Presentations

Laurence Couldrick, Head of Catchment Management here at the Trust, and Dylan Bright from South West Water did a combined presentation that demonstrated how Upstream Thinking and the Catchment Based Approach combine to provide multiple ecosystem benefits.

Brett Grosvenor from the Environment Agency introduced flood risk management into the overall picture and Arlin Rickard from the Rivers Trust brought the whole event together by welcoming the coalition Government’s announcement of another £2,200,000 of national funding for the forthcoming year.

Dan Rogerson thanked Ian Harvey, whose cow barn we used and noted that even the cattle had been attentive during the talks!