Our catchment plan
The Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) embeds collaborative working at a river catchment scale to deliver cross cutting improvements to our water environments. The CaBA partnership has produced a Framework document to guide individual Catchment Partnerships in developing their local Catchment Plans.
The UBOCP Catchment Plan will establish a strong framework for collaborative working to deliver integrated enhancements within out catchment. The Plan will develop as our Partnership grows and will lead to providing multiple benefits for partner organisations, local communities and the environment. Benefits may include reducing flood risk whilst also cleaning up pollution, protecting drinking water resources, improving biodiversity and improving health and recreation for local communities.
The CaBA Framework identifies four components of a Catchment Plan:
- Catchment Vision and Terms of Reference
- Data & Evidence to underpin a weight of evidence approach;
- Delivery or Project Plan;
- Monitoring and Evaluation Plan.
Summary of current progress towards the production of the UBOCP Catchment Plan:
Catchment Vision and Terms of Reference
The Upper & Bedford Ouse Catchment Partnership vision is for our rivers and their catchment to be healthier, richer in wildlife and valued by all.
The Partnership’s Terms of Reference and the objectives by which we seek to achieve this vision can be found here: UBOCP Vision & Terms of Reference.
Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Our revised project list will identify monitoring requirements and activities for individual projects.
As our partnership evolves and becomes more active, we will adopt and adapt a good practice Monitoring and Evaluation plan to ensure that we are achieving our vision and objectives in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.
Data & Evidence to underpin a weight of evidence approach
Significant information about our watercourses and wider environment is already known by organisations such as the Environment Agency and CaBA.
Data on water quality and flows, fish, invertebrates, invasive species etc is available to the partnership and its members to help identify issues and projects to address them.
We are seeking to link this website with the CaBA Data Package for our catchment, which has over 100 GIS data layers available for this catchment identifying the spatial pattern of opportunities; issues, characteristics and the possible sources of the issues. This evidence will be supplemented and improved by local surveying and monitoring undertaken by UBOCP partners, including our new Volunteer River Wardens.
Delivery or Project Plan
The core of our Catchment Plan is a list of projects, being planned or implemented, which will help us achieve our vision and objectives.
Some projects are partnership-led projects and they can only be delivered through the collaborative working of a number of partners and under the oversight of the partnership. Other projects are partner-led projects and these can be planned and delivered by individual partner organisations, but which contribute towards the vision and objectives of the wider partnership.
We are currently reviewing and prioritising our project list and will create a link to it in the near future. For now, example projects can be viewed on our catchment pages, eg. The Ivel Catchment. We will further develop these pages to enable easy identification of planned, current and completed projects across the catchment.