Environment Agency Navigation and Waterways

When it comes to water quality, we understand this is increasingly important to those who enjoy the waterways for their leisure and recreation.

Facilities

With large numbers of registered vessels on our waterways, all river users must act responsibly to ensure a safe and healthy river environment is maintained so all users can enjoy the waterway. This is why we advocate that sewage waste should never be disposed of directly into the water course. All boaters should use the designated pump-out and chemical cassette disposal facilities located upon our waterways, at either public facilities or within commercial boatyards and marinas. The Environment Agency provides some facilities along our waterways, and many marinas have their own provision. Any expansion of facilities or installation of new sites is currently beyond our available resources, and placement of new facilities would require careful planning if budgets allowed.

Communications and Awareness

UK waterways may have their own bylaws regarding “grey” water, such as that from sinks and washing machines, and “black” water (sewage). Boaters should check these before boating on any river as there is variation in legislation across areas of the UK and navigation authorities. In the absence of consistent legal requirements, we have worked with RYA and others on initiatives such as the Green Blue ‘Green Guide to Inland Boating’ and Love Where You Sail, to promote good environmental management and appropriate disposal of sewage waste. Education and awareness is central to encouraging responsible sewage disposal by boaters. We have regular contact with stakeholders such as local boating groups, user associations and marinas to reinforce this messaging. We can also raise awareness to registered customers through their annual renewals and other communications.

Enforcement and Legal Position

Discharging sewage waste could result in a pollution incident that affects fish populations and /or habitats, which could result in prosecution. Information on how to report a pollution can be found here: report water pollution in England - GOV.UK

The Thames Navigation Licensing & General Byelaws 1993 explicitly prohibit the discharge of sewage. However, not all waterways have the same byelaws. Byelaws are jurisdiction-specific and cannot be adopted for all waterways without going through a statutory process of drafting, consultation, and Secretary of State approval.

We are pleased to share our mid-year report for our Plan for 2025 which is available at this link ‘Our waterways - a plan for 2025 - mid year report’.

This report provides an update on our progress against the commitments we made in our plan. We have included both quantitative and qualitative information to highlight what we have done since April 2025, against each of the objectives and associated activities. We know we still have a long way to go to improve asset reliability and the service delivery on our waterways. We are working hard to make changes to ensure improvements can be made in the future.

We published our latest Waterways plan on the Environment Agency GOV.UK website. Use this link to read the latest version 'Our Waterways - a plan for 2025'. The plan focusses on making improvements to our waterways in 2025. The objectives are to:

• keep our staff and customers safe
• make improvements to the customer experience
• secure more income to move towards a financially sustainable service
• describe the future ambition for our waterways and how we will get there

How we will update on our progress

• We reported on our progress mid summer (completed - see news story) and again in the autumn.
• We will update all our boat registration customers in their registration renewals at the end of the year.
• We will also communicate our progress throughout the year through social media and other communication channels.

Please watch our video where our Area Directors, with responsibility for our waterways, speak about the plan and what our teams are doing to contribute towards it.

A look ahead

Due to the short-term nature of our Plan for 2025, work has already commenced internally and with our stakeholders on the longer-term strategy to establish the future ambition of our waterways, once we better understand our longer-term funding position. We will keep you up to date.