Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003 implementation - assessing Scotland's water environment: policy statement

Foreword

River Basin Management Planning is the driving force behind the management of Scotland’s water environment. We need to ensure that water use is sustainable, for this and future generations.

To help us do this, we define the environmental standards necessary to secure healthy aquatic ecosystems. We introduced a first set of such standards to underpin the first cycle of river basin management planning. These were published in Directions issued to SEPA in 2009, and then updated in 2014. In 2024 we have issued new Standards Directions to SEPA replacing those published in 2014 and incorporating an updated package of standards. The updated package reflects developments in scientific understanding that have been made since 2014:

• The Scotland River Basin District (Standards) Directions 2024
• The Solway Tweed River Basin District (Standards) (Scotland) Directions 2024

One of the key uses of the standards is to underpin the classification schemes needed to assess the state of our aquatic environment. Classification shows us where the status of the water environment is good, and where it requires improvement. This helps us identify and prioritise where improvements may be needed, and will in turn help us to assess how our water bodies have benefited from those improvements. The first set of classification schemes were published in Classification Directions to SEPA in 2009, and revised in 2014. We have issued further revised Directions in 2024 incorporating the changes needed to take account of the updated and expanded set of environmental standards:

• The Scotland River Basin District (Status) Directions 2024
• The Solway Tweed River Basin District (Status) (Scotland) Directions 2024

To support the 2014 Directions we published a policy statement on ‘Assessing Scotland’s water environment – use of environmental standards, condition limits and classification schemes’. This updated policy statement replaces the 2014 document.

This policy statement and the associated Standards and Status Directions are intended to provide stakeholders with a better understanding of our approach to the protection of the water environment through the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003 (WEWS)^[1].

To complement these documents, our policy statement on “Principles for setting objectives for the River Basin Management Plan” describes our approach to setting environmental objectives for the water environment.