Update meeting with Norfolk Environment, Food and Farming

On 20 July, members of the Sustainable Abstraction Projects Team met with Steve Moncaster from Norfolk Environment, Food and Farming (NEFF) as part of our regular catch-up meetings. These meetings provide an opportunity to share project updates and build a shared understanding of the work being undertaken by each organisation.

During the meeting, we reminded NEFF of the revised project timetable, including the extension of the options identification and appraisal stage until April 2027, with any licence changes becoming effective in October 2029.

We discussed the latest work on options identification; this included an update on the new Batched Abstraction Modelling (BAM) tool. BAM helps us assess how individual abstraction licences and points, and groups of licences together, may affect groundwater conditions at site-specific locations. The new BAM focuses on changes in groundwater flux which is more compatible with the key assessment criteria at site level.

We outlined a range of planed model scenarios, including targeted reductions for licences identified as having the greatest impacts, broader reductions across a wider group of licences and combinations of different approaches. These scenarios will help us ascertain the most appropriate licence change solution to achieve the environmental objectives.

NEFF shared updates on their ongoing engagement with licence holders, including early discussions around potential abstraction proposals. We discussed how we can continue to provide advice on the application process and the likely constraints, such as hands-off flow conditions, that may be applied to any new winter abstraction licences. NEFF discussed their continued work with Groundwater Science and will discuss our modelling scenarios and feedback. NEFF raised wider water resource pressure concerns, and we agreed to keep these discussions under review.

We look forward to continuing these discussions as the project moves forward.