Water vole (credit: Terry Whittaker)
Save our chalk streams
Latest update:
The new Planning & Infrastructure Bill is a key opportunity to strengthen protections for our precious chalk streams. During 2025, we have been working with other Wildlife Trusts, MPs and members of The House of Lords to support the submission of an amendment to the Bill, which details new measures for protecting chalk streams in the planning system. We have been working with The Bishop of Norwich, who is a member of the House of Lords, to ensure that our chalk streams are protected. In October, the Bishop tabled the inclusion of our Chalk Stream amendment to the House of Lords - and it was agreed by a big majority.
After going back and forth between the House of Commons and the House of Lords this summer and autumn, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is now almost law. Without key protections for our wildlife in the new Bill, Norfolk’s nationally and globally important wildlife sites - including chalk streams, wildflower meadows, and ancient woodlands – could be under threat
Ask your MP to support this amendment
Rights of the River
Alongside our work to try to get national safeguards for our chalk streams, we have been working with Norwich City Council to secure greater protection for the River Wensum.
Find out more about Rights of the River and how you can help
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The majority of the world’s chalk streams – around 85% – are found in England, and approximately 10% of these are found in Norfolk, which makes the county globally important for this rare habitat. Of the 220+ chalk streams found in England, only 11 of these have any legal protections.
Chalk rivers in Norfolk include the Rivers Bure, Glaven, Stiffkey, Burn, Heacham and Gaywood, but the longest, biggest and most significant is the River Wensum, which runs alongside Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Sweet Briar Marshes nature reserve and forms a vitally important corridor that helps wildlife to move through the county.
The Government has a valuable opportunity to stand up for our chalk streams in their planning policy reforms. We are calling on them to introduce specific legal protections in planning for all our chalk streams, to protect them from development-related harm.
Our chalk streams need protecting
England's chalk streams are one of the rarest habitats on earth! Their crystal-clear waters are home to water voles, white-clawed crayfish, Norfolk hawker dragonflies and kingfishers, making them our equivalent to the Great Barrier Reef or the Amazon Rainforest. A truly special habitat that we are so lucky to enjoy.
They are not just important in their own right, they are fabulous corridors for wildlife for creatures such as otters, birds, bats – helping these creatures to move through the landscape. Yet many of our chalk streams are now dirty and choked by pollution, threatening the wildlife that calls them home and the people that rely on them for their wellbeing. The Government must introduce specific protections for all chalk streams in their planning reforms, to ensure these unique habitats are conserved and put into recovery for future generations.
How can planning reform protect our chalk streams?
The Government is in the process of reviewing the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Current measures fall far short of what is required to sufficiently protect chalk streams, especially from indirect pressures, such as pollution that occurs elsewhere in a river’s catchment, or abstraction to provide a water supply for new housing. Granting chalk streams better protections within the planning system and legally recognising how important they are will mean they are better protected when road or house building happens near them.
What is NWT doing? (Timeline)
We have sent a number of open letters, urging the government to strengthen protections for the UK’s chalk streams within planning policy.
September 2025
As the Planning and Infrastructure moved to the House of Lords, we worked with the Bishop of Norwich to table our chalk stream amendment. There was lots of cross-party support for this. You can read our briefing for the Lords Committee Stage here.
June 2025
We invited our local MPs to a chalk stream briefing drop-in session at Westminster to talk to them about the issues which are chalk streams are facing. We also then held a photo opportunity where MPs gathered in Parliament Square to call on the Government to strengthen planning reforms to protect England’s globally rare chalk streams.
The show of cross-party support followed the government’s decision to vote down key chalk stream protection amendments at Committee stage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
March 2025
We asked our MPs to attend the second reading of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill on 24th March to raise the importance of chalk streams and the need for new measures for them in the planning system. Greater consideration of chalk streams in the planning system could help safeguard these fragile habitats, without compromising the Bill’s goals. During the reading, chalk streams were mentioned 15 times!
February 2025
We contacted all of our Councillors in Norfolk, asking them to sign a powerful open letter to Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP and Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP:
Matthew Pennycook’s response to our open letter
November 2024
We signed an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government The Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP:
We are also contacting and meeting with Norfolk MPs to encourage them to champion chalk streams in Government during the National Planning Policy Framework reviews. Within the Framework, we are calling for stronger protections for chalk streams as an irreplaceable habitat, and the introduction of 50-100 metre ‘no development’ buffers surrounding chalk streams and their catchments.
We are promoting the recognition of chalk rivers in Norfolk County Council's Local Nature Recovery Strategy and working with partners to develop projects to protect and restore Norfolk’s chalk rivers, particularly the Tas, which forms a wild corridor through the south Norfolk Claylands.
Amendment 94: protecting chalk streams
This amendment creates much-needed new protections for chalk streams - some of our most wildlife-rich rivers, but ones that are sadly facing many threats. It seizes the opportunity created by the Spatial Development Strategies in Part 2 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to create a new mechanism to allow development impacts on chalk streams to be appropriately considered within the planning system.
Spatial Development Strategies will be required to list chalk streams in their area and implement planning measures to protect them. These measures could vary according to the needs of the area, allowing strategies to balance local conservation and development needs. In the most sensitive chalk stream spots, such as around headwaters for particularly vulnerable chalk streams, development could be restricted. In other places, specific steps could be required of the developer, or of the local water company, to reduce the development’s impact on the chalk stream. In some places, where chalk streams are healthy, no extra measures may be necessary.
This amendment is a pragmatic step towards addressing root development pressures on chalk streams, through policies at a spatial level that could interact and align with water company actions to manage indirect development effects.
You can find out more about our work relating to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill here.
Brown trout (credit: Linda Pitkin)
Water vole © Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Otter at the River Bure (credit: David Jackson)
©Jon Hawkins Surrey Hills Photography
We need your help to save our chalk streams!
Why not write to your local councillor or MP to share your concerns at this vital time? We’ve included some bullet points below with suggestions of the kind of things you might want to highlight. We’d recommend using your own words and emphasise how important these precious habitats are to you.
- The majority of the world’s chalk streams are found in England, and approximately 10% of these are found in Norfolk, which makes the county globally important for this rare habitat.
- Despite their ecological value, chalk streams are exceptionally vulnerable to pollution, over-abstraction, and habitat degradation.
- Water quality in chalk streams across the UK continues to worsen, with detrimental impacts for wildlife
- The opportunity of planning reforms should be used to designate chalk streams and their catchments with a bespoke protection.
Learn more about chalk streams
Norfolk councillors demand action on chalk stream crisis
62 of Norfolk’s local councillors demand urgent action to protect our county’s rare chalk streams following shelving of Chalk Stream…
Tales from the banks of chalk rivers
Learn more about the magic of chalk streams and what you can do to protect them.
We're urging UK Government ministers to protect globally rare chalk streams in planning reform
Alongside a group of UK nature charities, we have written to Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP and Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP calling for action to…
