- A policy paper published in May 2026 formalises the agency's support for catchment-scale interventions, setting expectations for water companies and regional planners facing growing climate pressures.
For years, nature-based solutions have occupied an awkward space in water management: widely praised, selectively funded, and rarely written into regulatory requirements. Against that backdrop, a position statement published in May 2026 signals that England’s Environment Agency expects NbS to feature in the planning submissions of water companies and regional groups, while being explicit about what they cannot be asked to replace.
The document draws on the IUCN definition of NbS and covers a broad spectrum of interventions, from farm-scale features to whole-catchment programmes. These can capture and slow run-off, improve infiltration, store water naturally, reduce sediment inputs and improve water quality. Specific measures in scope include soil health improvements, run-off attenuation features such as retention basins and swales, wetland and peatland restoration, leaky barriers, and river and floodplain reconnection. For international readers, where definitions of NbS vary considerably, this specificity is one of the document's more useful contributions.
The Environment Agency now expects NbS to feature in regional water resources plans and statutory company submissions
What regulators will and will not accept
The most operationally significant aspect of the statement is what the agency explicitly rules out. NbS must not be relied upon to recover the large resource deficits already present in some catchments. The primary response to over-abstraction remains abstraction reduction, and NbS should be designed alongside those measures, not instead of them.
Within that constraint, the agency identifies a genuine and growing role. There is potential to use NbS to increase the resilience of environmentally sensitive catchments whilst strategic water resource solutions are being implemented, with benefits described as greater when applied at catchment scale, where they contribute more meaningfully to long-term water security.
The agency requires evidence before implementing NbS, scaled to the size of the project. Where outcomes are uncertain, it endorses adaptive management: NbS projects may proceed, but must include monitoring and assessment to maximise benefits.
Evidence base and what comes next
The document acknowledges that the evidence base for NbS in England is stronger for flood risk management than for water resources. Modelling completed across five catchments indicated NbS are likely to enhance groundwater recharge and baseflow, and field trials are now ongoing in three catchments to gather further data.
A 2020 UK government-sponsored technical report on NbS and water security, drawing on the UN World Water Development Report, found that NbS can improve water supply and quality, reduce disaster risk, and deliver co-benefits across rural and urban settings. The agency plans to publish a practical handbook in summer 2026, translating this position statement into design guidance.
