Document1
Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative
Draft Terms of Reference
Pre-Meeting, 26th March 2012
1.
Aims
The Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative exists to:
1. Improve the health of our local waters in the Frome & Piddle catchment and
achieve the statutory environmental standards for the benefit of wildlife and
users of these waters and those they influence by:





Working together to understand the issues.
Discussing and agreeing on outcomes and priorities.
Sharing information and resources.
Working together to tackle difficult issues that require multi-agency
input.
Working collaboratively to deliver work on the ground to achieve the
agreed outcomes.
2. Ensure that work to improve waters in the area is well informed by local
evidence.
3. Co-ordinate and integrate Steering Group organisations relevant plans,
policies, strategies and activities, both current and planned, in order to
secure better, more effective working and outcomes.
4. Maximise the use of existing resources and seek to attract additional funding
(where appropriate).
5. Identify knowledge gaps, highlight uncertainties and promote further research
6. Produce a strategic Catchment Plan that agrees targets for the catchment
and details what on the ground activity is needed and when in order to
achieve them.
7. Trial an engagement approach to achieve the statutory standards by means
of local engagement and share the findings as required to the Defra
catchment pilot scheme.
2.
Governance & structure
a) The Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative will comprise a partnership
supported by a Catchment co-ordinator (CC).
b) The work of the CC, the Terms of Reference (ToR) and the delivery of
the catchment plan will be directed by a Steering Group, supported
and administered by Wessex Water (Appendix A).
c) Task and finish groups may be set up to undertake specific short term
work which contributes to the aims of the Initiative. Existing
partnerships and groups may be co-opted for this purpose.
Document1
Document1
d) The work of Catchment Initiative shall be supervised and audited by a
high level Governance group (see Appendix A) comprising
representatives of regulators and funding organisations.
e) The life of the initiative will be defined by the timelines of the actions
within the catchment plan developed by the Steering Group
Figure 1 Illustration of the catchment initiative structure.
South West
River Basin
Liaison Panel
Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative
Governance
Group
Stakeholders
Partners
Steering Group
Task and
Finish
Groups
3.
Membership of Groups
3.1
Governance Group
a) This will comprise senior members of staff of the regulatory or funding
organisations.
b) All Members shall have the power to influence budgets and staff
resources within their own organisations with respect to the initiative.
c) The group will be responsible for auditing the proposals agreed by the
steering group and ensuring that agreed actions, programmes and
budgets are achieved.
d) The group will feedback the outputs to their relevant Boards and to the
River Basin Liaison panel.
Members will be selected from:
Organisation
Natural England
Environment Agency
Wessex Water
Document1
Interest area
Dorset Manager
National WFD team/Regional/Area team leader
Director of Resource and Asset Management
Document1
3.2
Partners
a) The Frome & Piddle Partners will comprise any organisations whose activities
and interests influence the aims and objectives of the initiative and who will
sign up to the catchment plan. Partners may be organisations that represent
residents (such as Parish Councils) or charities and voluntary groups who
contribute to delivering benefits such as river restoration or who protect a
relevant special interest feature.
b) They will be consulted on the aims and objectives of the project, actively
involved in developing the catchment plan and in delivering, or
communicating, the measures to achieve it.
c) Partner organisations can sit on the steering group or task and finish groups.
d) Each partner representative must be committed to achieving the aspirations
of Initiative and be able to influence outcomes within their own organisation
(Appendix B).
e) Due to the large number of potential partner organisations, a small steering
committee will represent all partners in managing the CC and the project
delivery.
3.3
Steering Group
a) The Frome & Piddle Steering Group will comprise a key representative of a
partners interest area and will undertake to represent both the interests of
own organisation and those of other organisations who share that interest.
b) The individual organisational goals will be synergistic with the purposes set
out for the Partnership.
c) The Steering Group will aim to meet once every two months to ensure swift
progress is made around agreed objectives.
d) It shall review financial and technical progress reports provided by the CC
and agree subsequent action required to ensure the Project meets its overall
objectives;
e) Each individual member will commit to attend each Steering Group meeting.
When this is not possible, the member shall send a suitable deputy.
f)
Each individual member must be committed to achieving the aspirations of
the Steering Group and be able to influence outcomes within their own
organisation (Appendix B).
g) The Steering Group may delegate specialist tasks to relevant partnership
groups or form Task and Finish groups from partners and stakeholders.
Members will be representatives of:
Document1
Document1
Organisation
Interest area
Dorset AONB & Purbeck District Council
Dorset Wildlife Trust
Landscape, heritage, Wild Purbeck
Nature Improvement Area
Flood risk, highways, waste,
development
River restoration, biodiversity
Environment Agency/Natural England
Catchment Sensitive Farming
Environment Agency
WFD delivery - WQ, Fisheries,
ecology
Catchment Sensitive Farming
Dorset County Council
Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group
Frome, Piddle & West Dorset Fisheries
Association
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust
Natural England
Wessex Water
Westcountry Rivers Trust
West Dorset District Council
(Planning)
Land Agent
Fisheries, riparian interests
Fisheries science, academic and
applied research
SSSI, SPA, protected species
Waste treatment, raw water quality,
abstraction
Fisheries, Catchment Sensitive
Farming
Development, flood risk
Tenants & Landowners
Landowner (CLA/NFU)
Farmers & Landowners
RSPB Water Policy
Water Policy, Payment for
Ecosystem Services
3.4
Stakeholders
a) Stakeholders are those people and organisations who influence the
state of the river environment, either directly or indirectly, or are
affected by its quality.
b) Stakeholders may be individuals such as land owners, fishermen,
residents or organisations that are not partners
c) Stakeholders may include users of the water services such as
recreational clubs, fishermen, both commercial and recreational, trade
organisations, agents who represent a number of individuals, and
abstractors of water.
d) Stakeholders shall be limited to those whose interest effect is upon the
groundwater or surface water of the rivers Frome and Piddle and their
tributaries or the effects of these rivers on Poole Harbour
e) Stakeholders will be invited to comment on the Catchment Plan, to
further key decisions by the steering group and can be drawn upon to
make up task and finish groups.
Document1
Document1
f)
3.5
A stakeholder list will be maintained by the CC for communication.
Task and Finish Groups
Role of the Task and Finish Groups
a) Task and finish groups will be set up by the Steering Group, on an ‘as
needed’ basis, in order to carry out work that needs more detailed or
specialist attention. This will include exploring and improving
evidence, and developing solutions, and funding bids.
b) Issue based task and finish groups will be set up by the Steering
Group to allow relevant individuals and organisations to come together
to explore evidence, issues, and put forward ways to deliver solutions.
c) Issue based task and finish groups will be tasked by the steering
group and shall provide recommendations to it.
Make up of the task and finish groups
a) Membership of task and finish groups will be decided on by the
Steering Group.
b) The task and finish groups will be made up of individuals and
organisations with a particular interest, knowledge or influence in the
subject of the group, and may be drawn from the partnership, or the
wider initiative stakeholders or may include national specialists.
3.6
South West River Basin Liaison Panel
Role of the South West River Basin Liaison Panel (taken from The
Terms of Reference for all Liaison Panels)

The liaison panel is a body of co-deliverers able to take the action
required at the river basin district level to meet the requirements of the
Water Framework Directive. This includes enabling and encouraging
action by others.

They help the implementation of the Directive by contributing river basin
district level knowledge, understanding and information. They add value,
share the implementation of the River Basin Management Plan, scrutinise
the required action and its delivery, and assist with stakeholder
engagement at all levels.
The Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative will provide information and the
agreed catchment plan to the South West River Basin Liaison Panel.
Document1
Document1
Appendix A – Draft Structure
Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative
SW River Basin
Management
Plan
EA – WFD
NE – SSSI
Governance
Group
WW – PWS
Stakeholders
Steering
Group
WW Catchment
Co-ordinator
Coordinate,
monitor &
report
Phase 1
Develop
Catchment
Management Plan
Dec 2012
Phase 2
Catchment Delivery
EA WFD
improvements
Poole Harbour
Nutrient Plan
Catchment
Dorset
Sensitive
Wild Rivers
Farming
Document1
New initiatives
WW Catchment
Management
Document1
Appendix B
Person Specification for the Frome & Piddle Catchment Initiative
Members
Below are a range of skills, experience and knowledge that initiative members will
ideally have. It is accepted that not all members of the initiative will be able to
demonstrate all these attributes, but the aim is for the initiative as a whole, to have
many of them.
1. Local knowledge: Show a good knowledge and understanding of improving
waters in the Frome & Piddle area, its organisations and its issues
2. Team player: Be able to work as part of a team.
3. Political understanding: Have understanding of political and policy imperatives
at national and local level.
4. External focus: Be able to focus on other individuals or on groups or
organisations outside their own and show commitment to the benefits of working
in partnership
5. Cultural flexibility: Be able to develop rapidly an in-depth understanding of a
wide range of organisational, professional and community cultures.
6. Cross cultural: Be able to look beyond existing structures and to work and
develop plans and strategy across organisations.
7. Influencing and negotiating skills
8. Innovative: ability to think ‘outside the box’/laterally. Be able to produce new
views of old problems.
9. Sectoral/organisational knowledge: Contribute knowledge and experience
from the perspective of their own sector/organisation. Understanding of strategic
and financial issues in that sector / organisation.
10. Communication: Be an excellent communicator at all levels. Be able to express
themselves clearly in speech and writing.
11. Self confident: Have belief in themselves, their own view and be prepared to
state and reaffirm their position.
12. Personal maturity: Be able to deal with complexity and ambiguity. Have capacity
to tune in to the needs and feelings of others whether directly or indirectly
expressed.
13. Respect diversity: Be able to show respect for the diversity of other’s viewpoints
and backgrounds.
14. Collective responsibility: Be willing to work on a consensus basis and
demonstrate corporate/collective responsibility.
15. Strategic comprehension: Have the ability to understand the long term or
widespread implications of decisions.
16. Analytical ability: Have the capacity to process detailed information.
Document1