{"id":44582,"date":"2025-08-05T02:26:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44582\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T02:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:26:17","slug":"rights-of-hampshire-rivers-recognised-in-council-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44582\/","title":{"rendered":"Rights of Hampshire rivers recognised in council votes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;Unfortunately just being a Site of Special Scientific Interest doesn&#8217;t necessarily protect the rivers from overdevelopment, from sewage dumping, from run-off from roads and agriculture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Because the national government is not doing enough, local authorities&#8230; are taking matters into their own hands and seeking ways to protect our natural resource.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On 16 July, Southampton City Council, which helps to manage the Test and Itchen rivers, passed a near-identical resolution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lewes District Council and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council have also previously acknowledged river rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lawyers at Hogan Lovells, who worked on the Lewes declaration, said it was a &#8220;step forward&#8221; in protection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibanet.org\/recognising-the-rights-of-a-river-with-pro-bono-support\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">they wrote, external<\/a>: &#8220;Rivers and nature do not have legal personhood in England, or the corresponding right to sue and be sued in their own right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The wildlife trust said the votes &#8220;reflect a growing recognition that our rivers, and particularly our rare chalk streams, deserve stringent legal recognition and protection&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Southern Water, which recently applied to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southernwater.co.uk\/media\/i4mf5hvk\/southern-water-drought-order-application-2025.pdf\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">increase the amount of water it can take from the Test, external<\/a> in an emergency, said its long-term aim was to reduce abstraction through schemes including a new reservoir.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said it was already spending millions of pounds in the Test catchment on upgrading infrastructure and improving the river&#8217;s health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Department for Environment, Food &amp; Rural Affairs added: &#8220;The government has put down the building blocks to clean up England&#8217;s rivers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are rebuilding the water network in one of the largest infrastructure projects in this country&#8217;s history, with a record \u00a3104bn investment to upgrade crumbling pipes and cut sewage spills in half by 2030.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We will go further by creating a new, powerful water regulator responsible for the entire water sector \u2013 abolishing Ofwat and bringing together the water functions from four different regulators into one.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said: &#8220;Unfortunately just being a Site of Special Scientific Interest doesn&#8217;t necessarily protect the rivers from overdevelopment,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-44582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}