I recently hosted a meeting with Severn Trent Water to discuss their plans to improve water quality of the River Teme between Leintwardine and Tenbury Wells.

The event highlighted Severn Trent’s ‘Get River Positive’ campaign to establish bathing water quality status for a 12 mile stretch of the river over the next few years, starting with installing new monitoring equipment at several sites along the river this summer.

Some 70 people attended the event, including county, town and parish councillors and representatives from those involved in managing the river, including riparian owners, the Environment Agency, the NFU, Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the Rivers Trust.

Local stakeholders were also involved, including key land and estate owners, as well large animal vets and river user groups such as the British Canoeing Association, the Angling Trust and community group Community Resource.

I also went to look at one of the monitoring stations installed on the Teme, which is providing real time data, measuring different parameters to test river water quality, as part of an extensive pilot monitoring and sampling project taking place across 50 locations in two rivers this summer - one of the most extensive river monitoring programmes in the UK.

I have worked closely with Severn Trent to ensure that the River Teme is at the heart of their plans to improve water quality. Our water company has set itself a target to ensure that 90% of people in the Midlands live within an hour’s drive of a bathing water site by 2030. This is a more challenging task than it may sound, as not a single river in the Midlands yet achieves bathing water quality status.

This initial meeting was a key first step towards explaining the project to interested groups, riparian owners and farmers to highlight what opportunities there may be to provide safe and healthy places to enjoy the river in and around Ludlow.

As readers will know, I have championed the health of our rivers and waterways in recent years. The lack of rainfall this summer has brought into sharp focus how we need to shepherd our water resources to protect the health of our rivers. So this is not just about tackling the scourge of sewage being discharged by water companies, important as this is. We need to look in a holistic way at how as a country we manage water resources so that we can all rely on access to clean water in a reliable and safe way, as well as managing the treatment of foul water and flood risk. Climate change is bringing these issues into sharp relief.

Severn Trent is leading the way in this sector, and while holding them to account for delivering against their licenses, I shall continue to work with them constructively so that South Shropshire’s waterways can be returned to the thriving natural habitats I remember from my youth, which we need to pass on to next generations.