East of England

The East of England regional test will assess the effectiveness of catchment investment planning, delivered as part of Anglian Water’s Advanced WINEP programme, using buyer demand for investing in NbS as a proxy for success. Any critical barriers identified will be evaluated, with respective enabling conditions detailed in outputs as recommendations. The regional test is also designed to specifically consider recommendations made by the Independent Water Commission and subsequent Government Water White Paper relating to regional system planning. The test will examine the role of an existing regional entity as an effective convenor responsible for managing investible pipelines of NbS projects. The purpose of this regional test is to inform the development of future water sector regulation and policy.

To this end, a series of hypotheses have been developed which will be examined through this regional test:

1. Water company investment provides an effective place-based anchor to help leverage in other sources of investment from different sectors to deliver nature-based solutions.
2. A trusted regional convenor is critical to effective regional systems planning as it:
1. increases the opportunities for aggregating finance from multiple sources, and,
2. increases opportunities for scalable aggregation of nature-based solutions projects.

The East of England test will align with the programme’s Theory of Change, analysing a process through which investible pipelines of nature-based solutions are created.