Reservoir Safety Reforms

1. We have worked with reservoir owners on emergency flood plans(External link) for all large, raised reservoirs. It is now a legal requirement for reservoir owners to produce and maintain on-site emergency flood plans. As of December 2022 all large, raised reservoirs were compliant. The requirement is notified to new owners when their reservoirs are registered.

2. We have now revised, updated and published reservoir flood maps(External link) for over 2,000 large raised reservoirs. We share this information with emergency responders to ensure accurate information is available for emergency planning. The maps can be found at https://environment.data.gov.uk/reservoir-flood-maps/(External link).

3. We have created a dedicated page on gov.uk for reservoir safety guidance(External link) documents. We hope this will make finding the guidance you need easier. We have already developed and published new guidance to support engineers and owners. This will ensure all inspections by supervising and inspecting engineers are systematic, detailed, and impartial. We also published new research into spillway design, examination and failure mechanisms(External link). 

4. We commissioned the Institution of Civil Engineers to review how we safeguard the future supply of reservoir engineers(External link). The report was published in February 2023. The recommendations made in the report will be taken forward alongside the reform programme.

5. We are driving forward progress against the other recommendations from the Independent Reservoir Safety Review(External link) and plan a formal consultation in 2025.

We are working closely with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), and the Panel Engineers Committee, on actions to increase the capacity and capability of supervising and inspecting engineers across England and Wales. These actions address the recommendations in the Independent Reservoir Safety Review(External link) and the Future Supply of Engineers Report(External link).

The changes will offer a range of benefits to the engineering community, for example: 

• Bringing more engineers into the industry, through a recruitment programme to encourage graduates into reservoir engineering careers. This will reduce the burden of work currently experienced by both supervising and inspecting engineers, and ensure we have enough resource for future demand.

• Supporting the career progression of panel engineers. We will align the career path to the new hazard risk classifications and provide additional learning and development opportunities to help engineers succeed.
  We are developing a mentoring programme to support panel engineers who wish to progress to the All Reservoirs Panel. We have surveyed the engineer community to develop data on the potential pipeline of All Reservoirs Panel Engineers and to identify potential candidates to support.

• Securing the quality and standards of work carried out by panel engineers. We have been working with the Panel Engineer Committee and have surveyed engineers to help identify inefficient processes and unnecessary tasks. This will enable us to identify tasks that could be reformed or eliminated, consistent with moving to a more proportionate, risk-based approach to reservoir safety.

We have issued new guidance for reservoir owners, operators and others involved in managing reservoir assets on How to manage your large raised reservoir(External link). It is designed to supplement our ‘owner and operator requirements(External link)’. We hope you will find this a useful resource. It covers:

• A simple overview of operating a reservoir in compliance with the Reservoirs Act 1975.

• Information about typical dams and reservoirs, including what structures and features you may have at your site

• Key elements to look out for when you visually inspect your site.

• Maintenance activities you should do at your site to keep your reservoir safe.

New reporting system for recording incidents

The Independent Reservoir Safety Review(External link) highlighted the importance of thorough incident reporting. Under Regulation 14 of SI 1677 (2013), undertakers have a legal duty to notify us when a reportable incident occurs at their dam. We have reviewed the new forms we published in May 2024 along with feedback from you. We will be providing updated forms this Spring to reflect the feedback and make the forms simpler to fill in. They will still be available at Report a reservoir incident(External link) along with supporting guidance.

We are in the process of creating an online repository of reservoir incidents from England and Wales. This will replace our annual report on incidents from 2025. The annual post-incident report for reservoir incidents (2024) will be published by summer 2025. 

The online repository will be called the Reservoir Incident Knowledgebase. It will contain case studies on incidents which occur. We are making this change so that we can share information on incidents and the lessons learned from them more quickly. It will also mean you can search and filter incidents. We expect this website to be available later this year.

Our 2023 post incident report(External link) has now been published on gov.uk. Some main lessons learned from the report are: 

• The importance of carefully planning drawdown tests and ensuring mitigation plans are in place if drawdown relies on a single valve. 
• The value of routine surveillance by staff with technical training on all structures associated with reservoirs
• Design and construction must consider the preparation of the foundation and heterogeneous soil behaviours
• The importance of keeping detailed records during construction
• The importance of temporary flood protection works during any major construction on spillways
• To be aware of risks with mature trees growing on dam embankments

We will be looking at how to share lessons from incidents faster and more effectively. If you have ideas on what you would like to see from incident reporting outputs, please contact reservoirs@environment-agency.gov.uk(External link).

The Reservoir Safety Review recommended that the Environment Agency should have the powers to question and challenge supervising engineers’ annual statements, inspecting engineers’ reports, risk assessments and reservoir management plans. These new duties will improve the quality and consistency of engineer reports and provide an ongoing national assessment, to help develop guidance and training.

As part of the Reservoirs Act Compliance and Enforcement Project (RACE2), we are currently reviewing how annual statements (Section 12s) are created and submitted. We are currently trialling a new process to gather feedback from engineers and undertakers. The proposed service will allow supervising engineers to access an online system and download an annual statement template which will be prepopulated. This change is part of the Environment Agency’s shift to digital-by-default. The new system will improve consistency in statements and make the administration process for statements more streamlined.

The launch of the RACE2 service is delayed so we can ensure that we deliver a product that meets our standards for quality and dependability. If you have any questions on this project, please contact reservoirs.data@environment-agency.gov.uk quoting “RACE2 Digital Project”. 

Creating an ongoing national assessment 

As part of our standards framework, we have developed a process to review reports and statements to create an ongoing national assessment. We are now 2 years into the process and presented the results to the BDS Conference, given feedback to engineers, there has been a substantial improvement to the quality of reports.  We are using this information to create a training strategy, develop KPI’s and dashboards to improve our guidance on-line and develop best practice.  Please follow the links for the new guidance on S12(External link) and S10(External link) along with Guidance for reservoir engineers(External link).