Water & Marine Red Tape Challenge
This theme is now closed for comment. An announcement on Red Tape Challenge plans will be made shortly.
You can read comments made during the theme spotlight (16 February 2012 – 12 April 2012), by sub-category below.
Over 420 regulations are included within Water & Marine, including drinking water quality, flood management, inland waterways, marine conservation and fisheries. Water is essential for our daily life, which is why protecting the health of our rivers and seas, maintaining our aquatic life, and managing our water and marine resources effectively is such an important challenge. As part of this, we must ensure that our policies are being implemented in the most effective way possible, and that our regulations are not creating unnecessary barriers to innovation and efficiency.
The Water White Paper, published in December, set out plans for a more robust and prepared water industry, promoting innovation and growth in the economy whilst protecting the environment. At the same time we are working with our delivery partners to implement the Water Framework Directive and a range of measures to achieve clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas.
Over the next five weeks we want to hear your views on which regulations could be; improved or redesigned; kept or scrapped; or implemented more efficiently. We want to use the Red Tape Challenge to find out how we can do things better whilst maintaining the important progress that has been made in flood prevention, access to inland waterways, water quality and conservation of our rivers and seas which support a wide range of ecosystems.
Our sector champions for this theme are Peter Simpson, Managing Director of Anglian Water and Barrie Deas, Chief Exec of National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. Meet them here.
Water
These regulations ensure the health of our rivers and water environment, and set the operating context for the water industry.
Inland Waterways
These regulations enable the Environment Agency and British Waterways to manage our inland waterways effectively.
Flood and Coastal Erosion
These regulations maintain an effective, resilient and robust capability to respond to flood emergencies.
Sea Fisheries
These regulations support the sustainability of marine fish, through monitoring fishing activities and enforcing standards on equipment, vessels and bycatch.
Freshwater Fisheries
These regulate freshwater fishing and angling and including conservation and sustainable exploitation of freshwater and migratory fish and the use of alien and locally absent species in aquaculture.
Marine Environment
These regulations deal with conservation of our marine ecosystems and aquatic life, and include a licensing system for potentially damaging marine activities.
This site is designed to promote open discussion of ways in which the aims of existing regulation can be fulfilled in the least burdensome way possible. The presence of a particular regulation or law on this website should not be read as implying any intention on the part of the Government to remove that regulation or law from the statute book. The purpose of this exercise is to open government up to the public.
