This post is by Guy Shrubsole.

For the first time, Who Owns England can reveal a map of land owned by two of England’s biggest water companies, United Utilities and Yorkshire Water – whose landholdings together span over 200,000 acres.

As a result, I can also reveal the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) owned by these water companies, many of which are in a poor state. Just 16% of SSSIs owned by England’s water companies overall are in a favourable condition, according to official data that I shared with the Guardian this past week.

These shocking stats underline the need to make major landowners, including water companies, accountable for how they manage their land. Whilst Labour’s Environment Secretary Steve Reed has just announced new measures to better regulate water companies that pump sewage into our rivers, a lot of river pollution starts further upstream – in the vast watersheds owned by the companies themselves. Overgrazing by sheep, nitrates run-off from livestock manure, and peat erosion caused by intensive grouse moor management all contribute to downstream river pollution. These peat bogs are also vital carbon stores and natural habitats in their own right, yet as the SSSI data suggests, in a bad state.

Labour has a golden opportunity to set up a new Public Nature Estate, ensuring public landowners and statutory undertakers like the water companies are duty-bound to manage their land for nature and carbon.

The maps

Here’s a static map showing the land owned by Yorkshire Water (YW) and United Utilities (UU):

And here’s an interactive Google Map – you can zoom in to see the land in detail:

Mapped area of land owned by:

United Utilities: 140,697 acres

Yorkshire Water: 62,185 acres

How I got the data

In the case of UU, the mapped land corresponds almost exactly to the figure I stated in Who Owns England (2019) (see p.299, Table 4), making it the largest landowning company in England & Wales. I built this map of UU’s land a while ago by analysing company land ownership data displayed via a paid account with Orbital Witness (more details here).

In the case of Yorkshire Water, I obtained a map of their landholdings by requesting the data via the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) – a form of freedom of information request that was applied to water companies following a court ruling in 2015. Yorkshire Water’s total landholdings I reckon to be a bit larger than the mapped area: some 68,927 acres in full (see my book, p.299, Table 4). The ‘missing’ 6,700 acres are probably water and sewage treatment works. In my EIR request, I sought to overcome previous objections raised by Yorkshire Water that releasing a map of their water treatment works would breach national security (!). So I stipulated that I wasn’t asking for the locations of water and wastewater treatment works, simply for a map of all watersheds they owned – the land where rainwater runs off into reservoirs and streams.

SSSI units owned by United Utilities and Yorkshire Water

Having a digitised map of land owned by these water companies is very useful, because it can then be combined with other geospatial data to investigate environmental performance.

I decided to do so for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) owned by YW and UU – these are meant to be some of our best-protected nature reserves. Natural England publish a regularly-updated map of SSSI Units complete with their current condition status (graded from Favourable – meaning good condition – through Unfavourable Recovering, Unfavourable No Change, and Unfavourable Declining).

Then – with huge thanks to my friend Lewis Winks (geographer and GIS pro) for his help and advice on this – I cleaned up a few geometry errors in the ownership layers, and used the QGIS function ‘Join by location’ to join the SSSI map to the ownership map. I then weeded out SSSI units that only marginally crossed into water company land (in most cases because of minor disparities in how boundaries had been drawn). A small number of SSSI units extend very slightly beyond the ownership boundaries.

Here’s my first draft of a map of SSSI units owned by these two water companies, shown in static form below, and as a layer on the Google Map above:

Measuring the area of these SSSI units gives us the following provisional results. Of the SSSI units apparently owned by YW and UU (a total of 81,208 acres):

• 7% by area are in Favourable condition (5,939 acres)
• 74% are in Unfavourable Recovering condition (60,332 acres)
• 14% are in Unfavourable No Change condition (11,720 acres)
• 4% are in Unfavourable Declining condition (3,217 acres)

This appears to be even worse than the sector-wide situation, where by area, 16% of English SSSIs owned by water companies overall are in favourable condition.

Major landowners have a particular responsibility to look after the nature in their care – but too many are clearly failing to be good stewards.

Labour must make big landowners like water companies publicly accountable, and set a legally binding target for improving SSSI condition incumbent on all owners. Water companies are already represented on the Major Landowners Group (MLG), a grouping of large public, private and third sector bodies convened by DEFRA and Natural England to manage SSSIs in their care. But Natural England should be given greater sign-off powers on land management plans for members of this group, particularly public sector landowners and those with statutory duties like water companies. The remit of the MLG should also be broadened to cover not just SSSIs, but all land owned by these major landowners – thereby helping the government deliver on its looming Environment Act targets and UN pledge to protect 30% of England for nature by 2030. This could be the beginnings of a groundbreaking new Public Nature Estate.