Recommendation 66

The new Office for Environmental Protection, established under the Environment Act 2021, is empowered to make highly significant contributions to the achievement 128 Water quality in rivers of the Government’s environmental objectives in general, and to the improvement of water quality in rivers in particular. We encourage the Office for Environmental Protection to take account of the relevant conclusions and recommendations of this report when planning the Office’s work on water quality, and to use the powers granted by Parliament to drive improvement of the regulation and enforcement regimes which govern the state of England’s rivers.