LAST week, the Senedd Economy Trade and Rural Affairs Committee published its lengthy review of the Water Resources (Control of Agricultural Pollution) (Wales) Regulations 2021 having heard and read evidence from the Farmers’ Union of Wales and other stakeholders, writes FUW president Glyn Roberts.

The report came as the result of a vote in June 2021 in which Senedd Members unanimously agreed to review the regulations just months after they had been passed by the pre-May 2021 election Senedd - but the publication of the report was delayed due to a judicial review. 

We have welcomed the publication by the Senedd committee as we believe it takes into consideration the concerns raised in our written and oral evidence submissions and recommends ways in which the Welsh Government should address them.

We have also called on the Welsh Government to implement the recommendations in full.

For instance, the first recommendation suggests that ‘the Welsh Government should re-introduce the derogation which allowed qualifying grassland farms to spread up to 250kg per hectare of nitrogen’ after it was removed from the draft regulations.

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This would apply to a large proportion of farms in Wales and bring the regulations in line with designated nitrate vulnerable zones in other UK and European countries.

Recommendations 8, 9 and 10 focus on the importance of considering and implementing alternative measures at the earliest opportunity such as the use of technology rather than having set closed periods for slurry spreading during the winter.

Such moves would avoid setting unintentionally low stocking rates and significantly reduce the capital investment required for new slurry stores - two of the main concerns FUW members rightly have in regards to these regulations. 

While recommendations 2 and 3 request for details on the support that has been, and will be, made available to farmers and how the Welsh Government will mitigate any unintended consequences of infrastructure improvements on the planning system, we have long maintained that the regulations in their current form are disproportionate and should be amended to tackle agricultural pollution issues first and foremost by targeting measures where they will have the most impact - moves which would address such issues raised in our evidence submissions and as highlighted in the committee’s report.

Nevertheless, we must now ensure that the Welsh Government, and Plaid Cymru as part of the cooperation agreement, gives this report the attention it deserves when responding to the committee’s recommendations and seeks to mitigate the severe consequences of the regulations in their current form.

The FUW will be discussing the report in detail with Members of the Senedd ahead of a debate in the coming weeks to ensure that the recommendations are implemented in full.

We would also like to thank the Senedd Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee for their work on this inquiry into - what the report correctly describes as - this controversial piece of legislation.