New report accuses United Utilities and the RSPB of causing environmental disasters

A new report published yesterday (Tuesday 5 March 2024) accuses United Utilities and the RSPB of wasting millions of pounds of public money on land management schemes at Haweswater in the Lake District, which in some cases have resulted in environmental disasters. The report, United Utilities at Haweswater found that a £3 million publicly funded tree planting project at the RSPB’s Haweswater reserve in Cumbria has resulted in many trees failing to grow due to being planted incorrectly, with the microplastics from the tree guards breaking down and polluting the watercourses which supply drinking water to 2.5 million people in the North West of England. The RSPB has allegedly been awarded a 40-year long lease at Haweswater by United Utilities.  

The report was produced after concerns that tenant farmers in the Lake District were being coerced by United Utilities into joining expensive conservation schemes at the expense of their own livelihoods. The main justification by United Utilities was the claim that sheep were to blame for the poor water quality from Haweswater, and by extension the water supply to the North West of England, despite the company’s laboratories finding nothing wrong with samples taken from the lake. 

Under the terms of the schemes, farmers are being forced to dramatically cut livestock numbers, eventually to levels where their business becomes unprofitable, and to re-wild and plant trees on productive farmland. Those who leave schemes claim to have been threatened with losing their farms, but regardless of whether they continue with the schemes or not, the result would appear to be the same. Once the tenancies run out, the farms are allegedly not being re-let, with United Utilities and the RSPB apparently working in conjunction to reap the financial benefits from the schemes they implement.  

According to the report’s author, United Utilities, with the help of the RSPB, is pushing farmers into untested schemes that demand rapid, radical changes without carrying out any small-scale trials beforehand. And no one appears to be held responsible when schemes fail, with millions of pounds of public money wasted. He goes on to say that: “The RSPB has been calling for ‘crimes against nature’ to be written into law. If what it did with United Utilities isn’t a crime against nature, then I don’t know what is”. 

The United Utilities at Haweswater report builds on the work of the Better Outcomes on Upland Common project which was released in 2014, the aim of which was to improve working relations between organisations to strengthen our ability to safeguard and manage the uplands. It comes to virtually identical conclusions as that earlier project, singling out the lack of communication between landowners and the farming communities as the biggest threat to successful coexistence, the main difference being that the situation has deteriorated even further since then. 

'United Utilities at Haweswater'

The full report, which is particularly condemning in its findings, can be read here.

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