Environment Agency - Urban Demonstrators - Urban Water Management Workshops

Tender description

Collaborative and integrated management of the urban water environment can yield multiple benefits including reduced flood risk, improved water quality and enhanced community well-being through engagement with green-blue spaces. With the growth of catchment partnerships across England, the framework now exists to drive forward such collaborative working and with it cost-effective delivery. More needs to be done, however, to engage certain key stakeholders within the urban environment, particularly 'local authorities' (Local Government, planners, transport departments, Local Enterprise Partnerships etc.) to convey not only the benefits to them of such collaborative engagement but also the importance of sustainable management of water resources to economic growth and regeneration. The catchment based approach (CaBA) provides the mechanism to undertake local authority engagement at a national scale. Backed with targeted high quality communications resources that capture the growing number of collaborative urban delivery case studies, such engagement could encompass a series of regional workshops. These four to five workshops would bring together key stakeholders, including local authorities, to drive knowledge exchange and the building of capacity across a range of issues including strategic targeting and design of interventions, opportunities for collaboration, current barriers to delivery and funding. These collaborative workshops and accompanying guidance literature would be complemented by direct engagement with both national (e.g. LGA) and umbrella organisations such as CaBA urban working group. Roll-out of the national engagement programme would fully exploit the expertise currently provided by the select few local authorities who are currently engaged with the catchment based approach. These workshops will be written up to provide case studies to illustrate the benefits from this work. The work will be delivered in liaison with the CaBA urban working group. The benefits from the previous workshops have been written up and are available here: http://urbanwater-eco.services/project/urban-demo-workshops/ This fixed contract would deliver 4-5 workshops and disseminate the outputs. Work would start in January and be completed by the end of March 2017.