This act is the enabling legislation for the Water Framework Directive. It identifies SEPA as the competent authority.

The main groundwater objectives of the Act are to:

• Prevent deterioration of the status of groundwater bodies;
  
  
• Protect, enhance and restore all bodies of groundwater with the aim of achieving good groundwater status by 2015;
  
  
• Prevent or limit the input of pollutants to groundwater and reverse any significant and sustained upward trends in the concentration of pollutants in groundwater;
  
  
• Achieve compliance with any relevant standards and objectives for protected areas.
  
  

The Directive requires Member States to put in place systems for managing their water environments, based on natural river basin districts and underpinned by extensive environmental monitoring and scientific investigation, called 'river basin management'. It further requires Member States to take account of the need to recover the costs of water services as a way of encouraging the sustainable use of water resources.

There is flexibility for Member States to take account of social, economic or wider environmental considerations by applying other objectives where it would be infeasible or disproportionately expensive to achieve the basic objectives.

The Water Environment and Water Services Act can be seen by clicking here.