Looking Ahead to 2020

Elterwater

2019 was once again a busy and varied year; we’ve been out delivering projects, working with local communities, monitoring our rivers and discussing exciting new ideas and plans for the future. However, now its time to turn our attention to 2020 and the years to come.

Our partnership, Becks to Bay, operates under 7 agreed themes (as to the right), which are all supported by engagement. It is our aim to deliver improvements against these themes, however this is only possible with the support of partners, landowners and the local community. Perhaps most importantly it’s sharing and engaging people with why we should value our rivers and what we can all do to protect them.  As part of the River Basin Management Plans consultation the Environment Agency have produced a short video to showcase this.

Looking Forwards:

In 2020 we will be kicking off our volunteer water quality sampling programme in the Leighton Beck. This is part of the Wholescale Approach to Marine Management (WAMM) project, hosted by the Rivers Trust. The project aims to support collaboration between coastal and catchment partnerships around Morecambe Bay. The first trials for our sampling programme in South Cumbria were held in 2019, however, we are now looking to establish this with a team of local volunteers who can undertake regular monitoring. If you’re interested please get in touch.

At the end of 2019 we were shortlisted under the Tesco Bags of Help centenary grants. This meant our project went to public vote in Tesco stores, which closed at the end of December. Therefore we hope to hear early this year how much funding we will receive – thank you to anyone who voted for us! The funding will be used in partnership with Groundworks to engage people with their local rivers, focusing on citizen science. We’re really looking forward to this one!

2019 saw the loss of funding to support the Catchment Management Groups, therefore we have expanded our catchment partnership work to include new partners and incorporate the learning we achieved through the Catchment Management Groups. We’re looking forward to developing our catchment partnership work over the coming year, identifying new and exciting opportunities across South Cumbria.

In 2020 we are looking to:

  • develop new partnership projects
  • support and contribute to the river basin management plans
  • expand our riverfly and citizen science monitoring programmes
  • develop community opportunities via the ‘Love My River’ project
  • establish a monitoring programme on Leighton Beck as part of the WAMM partnership project
  • deliver and monitor existing and new Natural Flood Management measures
  • review the data and evidence held on our catchment data portal
  • run a number of community events

Finally we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!