With public trust at an all-time low, following regular spills of raw sewage into rivers and waterways, England and Wales face a deepening crisis in their water systems rooted in decades of policy choices, regulatory failure, and the structural tensions of a privatised industry.

Wales is considering parallel reforms, while Scotland continues with a publicly owned model. This moment of institutional change creates an opportunity to examine how legal and regulatory design shapes outcomes for regions, communities, and the wider stakeholders involved.

The UK's three jurisdictions, operating within broadly comparable physical and economic environments, offer meaningfully different combinations of ownership, regulation, and governance philosophy. The reform underway enables comparison between the emerging English architecture and the longer-established Scottish and Welsh models.

We invite proposals exploring questions such as: whether ownership structure explains differences in investment, environmental performance, and the spatial distribution of costs and benefits; whether embedding water governance within wider statutory frameworks, such as the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, shapes outcomes; whether integrated regulation, as England is now developing, alters capacity to address cross-cutting challenges including catchment management, agricultural pollution, and climate adaptation; whether legal innovation like the recognition of rights of nature holds a transformative potential, and how governance arrangements generally distribute costs and benefits across regions, communities, and stakeholders as climate pressures intensify.

For general enquiries about project proposals, please contact armagan.gezici@uwe.ac.uk.

With public trust at an all-time low, following regular spills of raw sewage into rivers and waterways, England and Wales face a deepening crisis in their water systems rooted in decades of policy choices, regulatory failure, and the structural tensions of a privatised industry.

Wales is considering parallel reforms, while Scotland continues with a publicly owned model. This moment of institutional change creates an opportunity to examine how legal and regulatory design shapes outcomes for regions, communities, and the wider stakeholders involved.

The UK's three jurisdictions, operating within broadly comparable physical and economic environments, offer meaningfully different combinations of ownership, regulation, and governance philosophy. The reform underway enables comparison between the emerging English architecture and the longer-established Scottish and Welsh models.

We invite proposals exploring questions such as: whether ownership structure explains differences in investment, environmental performance, and the spatial distribution of costs and benefits; whether embedding water governance within wider statutory frameworks, such as the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, shapes outcomes; whether integrated regulation, as England is now developing, alters capacity to address cross-cutting challenges including catchment management, agricultural pollution, and climate adaptation; whether legal innovation like the recognition of rights of nature holds a transformative potential, and how governance arrangements generally distribute costs and benefits across regions, communities, and stakeholders as climate pressures intensify.

For general enquiries about project proposals, please contact armagan.gezici@uwe.ac.uk.