Story · Environment map · about 3 min
How healthy are England's rivers?
Under the Water Framework Directive each stretch of river is given an ecological status from High to Bad. The picture is sobering, and it varies a lot by region.
The national picture
Of 3,571 classified water bodies in England, 15% are High or Good and 23% are Poor or Bad. Blue lines are healthy, yellow is Moderate, red is Poor or Bad. Grey means not assessed.
The best district: Solway Tweed
In the Solway Tweed river basin district, 44% of classified water bodies are High or Good, the highest of any district with a meaningful number of rivers. It is no accident this is upland: fewer farms and fewer people along the bank generally means less runoff and fewer things a river has to recover from. Look at the Northumberland and Cumbrian uplands.
The lowest-scoring district: Thames
In the Thames river basin district only 5% of classified water bodies are High or Good. Click a red or yellow line: the panel lists the individual elements (fish, invertebrates, plants and algae, phosphate...) so you can see what drags a stretch down.
Swimming: a different scale
Bathing waters are classified separately, from bathing-season samples. Of 464 designated sites in England, 297 (64%) are Excellent and 32 are Poor. Most places people swim are not designated, so are not monitored.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- What could make a river stretch score badly even when it looks clean?
- Why would a classification built for rivers not tell you whether it is safe to swim?
Try it on the map: Zoom in on the river nearest to you. What status does it have, and which of the measured elements (fish, plants, phosphate...) drags it down?
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.