The Rivers Trust

The Rivers Trust is the umbrella body for the rivers trust movement working to protect, promote and enhance our freshwater ecosystems for both people and wildlife. With the support of 60 member trusts across the UK and Ireland, it works on the ground, in the heart of the community, to promote a sustainable future for our river environments. They use their expertise, knowledge and reach to provide advice to farmers, residents and organisations, to help rivers thrive, for now and the future.

Our ground-breaking strategic partnership with The Rivers Trust aims to tackle the big challenges facing rivers in the region. The partnership formalises the existing strong relationship we already have. We hope it will provide a blueprint for a new framework of environmental collaboration and investment.

Both parties expect the new partnership to facilitate longer-term planning of investment priorities, beyond the current water sector five-year regulatory cycle, allowing faster adoption of nature-based solutions and other collaborative ventures.

The strategic partnership with the Rivers Trust aims to drive forward the changes that are necessary to truly unlock Catchment Systems Thinking. This partnership will benefit not just customers in the North West of England but will share our learning across the country.

Our current Catchment Systems Thinking approach, and the successful projects that have evolved from this, have highlighted how looking beyond our own catchment land and utilising partnership working, can really enhance and maximise benefits for the environment.

This is one of the most ambitious partnership we have ever embarked on and it will continue to build on years of joint work. We hope that working with the Rivers Trust can help deliver real change for the better. This partnership forms part of our commitment to river health and our four pledges, specifically making rivers beautiful and supporting others to improve and care for them.