Water Net Gain
All the winners
Innovation fund
Recent Project Progress
Willingness To Accept Study
This Water Net Gain (WNG) farmer survey was conducted between September 2025 and January 2026 to understand farms’ water resilience challenges and opportunities, and to assess farmers’ attitudes toward participating in a Water Net Gain scheme.
Visual summaries have been created to provide a snapshot into the results. There are summaries that focus on questions most relevant to the interests of the different Water Net Gain Stakeholders and there are summaries for each of the local Rivers Trust areas that took part in the study.
Summary for the Farming community
Summary for Rivers Trusts
Summary for Water Companies
Summary for Westcountry Rivers Trust
Summary for Mersey Rivers Trust
Summary for Trent Rivers Trust
Summary for Essex & Suffolk Rivers Trust
Tax and Legal Implications Report
This report outlines what arrangements might form part of the WNG pond installation as well as operation of the scheme and how they might be accepted by the various stakeholders. As every case will be different, bespoke accountancy, legal and planning advice must always be sought before any implementation.
Having first-hand experience of drought and water use restrictions in our region, and with more water resource deficits predicted by 2050, we will be exploring the potential with the farming community for new ponds and lakes to create water storage ‘batteries’.
These ecologically connected and distributive ‘smart ponds’ would enhance water retention on land, charging during the winter, and enabling farmers during times of summer drought to either use the water for on-farm needs, thereby alleviating demand on the mains supply, or to sell to recharge our rivers via water companies adding to the water supply grid.”
Additional Benefits
Providing freshwater to rivers during droughts has many benefits. It can include diluting pollution build-up not managed through current agricultural water quality incentivisation schemes. Nature-based water retention solutions such as healthy soils, woodlands and wetlands can also improve flood protection and aquatic biodiversity.
Learn more about Water Net Gain
In this video our CEO Dr Laurence Couldrick shares details from the wider OFWAT Innovation Catalyst proposal.
He highlights the aims and objectives of the proposal to capture a distributed rainwater bank for the future.
Through working in partnership with South West Water, the Environment Agency, the Rivers Trust, Saputo Dairy UK and Duchy College, we are researching ways we can support farmers to bolster drought affected water supplies and ease associated river health pressures.
The Water Net Gain project is one of 16 solutions being awarded a share of £40 million via Ofwat’s Innovation Fund Water Breakthrough Challenge 3. The challenge encourages initiatives that help tackle challenges facing the water sector, such as achieving net zero, protecting natural ecosystems and reducing leakage, as well as delivering value to society.
