Water is our most precious natural resource. It is vital to people’s health and happiness, vital for the environment and our wildlife, and vital to our economy.

Our water environment is in crisis. Providing enough clean, safe water is becoming ever more difficult and expensive, and climate change is increasing the challenge. Our rivers and lakes are under pressure from pollution and abstraction, while most of our wetlands have been lost to drainage.

It need not be this way. The Blueprint for Water offers an alternative. An alternative where we are less wasteful of our water; where we keep our rivers flowing, clean and healthy and our wetlands wet. Where the water we use is priced fairly and those who pollute it are made to pay; where our waste is properly treated and not washed straight into waterways.

The Government has made a commitment to meet the objectives of the Water Framework Directive, which says the ecology of our waters must be restored to health by 2015. This Blueprint sets out the steps needed to meet this target