The Citizen's Panel — Windermere Water Quality Toolkit

Group of people discussing water quality in Windermere

The Citizen’s Panel

The Windermere Citizen’s Panel came together in 2022 to examine water quality in Windermere.

The Windermere Citizen’s Panel was commissioned by the Environment Agency as part of a national Rethinking Water initiative.

25 members of the public came together to answer the question:

HOW DO WE DO MORE TO IMPROVE WATER QUALITY IN THE WINDERMERE CATCHMENT WHILST SUSTAINING OUR COMMUNITIES AND THE ECONOMY?

Through 4 intensive sessions, panelists heard from local and national experts on their take on the issue of water quality. Based on this information, the group came up with recommendations to the Environment Agency Board and for the Love Windermere Partnership. This community toolkit is in response to the recommendations.

There were 6 key recommendations made by our Citizen’s Panel:

There are many organisations involved in the care and management of the Windermere catchment area. Collaboration is key. We recommend one of these be urgently appointed lead body with the responsibility to drive change. It needs the capacity to attract funding for all necessary activities to empower cohesive action.
This requires:
• Finding a common approach through a collaborative process to produce a shared vision and clear outcomes.
• Determining costs and benefits
• A meaningful Action Plan with SMART targets and KPIs
• Monitoring the results of the actions to ensure timely achievement of KPIs
• Where necessary, taking corrective action and imposing fines
• Wide support at all levels including government (financial, regulatory, legislative), private sector and 3rd sector, (national and international)
The Windermere catchment is a fragile environment and vital resource that needs to be protected from adverse human impacts. We would like everyone that lives, works and visits within the area to appreciate the impact of their actions and to play their part in improving water quality.
We recommend the implementation of a high profile local communication campaign to make people aware of the adverse impacts of certain behaviour.
This requires positive incentives and enforcement of existing regulations informed by environmental monitoring.
Specify a SMART (Specific-Measurable Achievable-Realistic-Time-specific) target for phosphate reduction that meets current and future needs of the Lake Windermere Catchment to continually improve water quality.
The tourism sector and tourists play an important role in sustaining the communities and economy in the Lake Windermere catchment.
All stakeholders need to work together to build a sustainable infrastructure plan with SMART targets.
Set strict local measured standards of all discharges (with special regards to phosphate outputs) of all privately owned systems that drain into the catchment area not via the main sewage system.
Designate the Lake District National Park as a phosphate vulnerable zone, leveraging the UNESCO status and publicise as part of an information campaign.