The Environment Agency’s Groundwater Modelling National Framework 2026-2034, with an estimated value of £17.8 million, provides an eight-year procurement framework for groundwater modelling services across England. The framework covers the development, maintenance and operational use of groundwater models, groundwater flood forecasting and technical support.
Envirogen’s role is in water treatment, not groundwater modelling. For Envirogen, the significance of the framework lies in what better groundwater intelligence can enable next: clearer decisions about where resources are available, where abstraction is under pressure and, where water quality constrains their use, whether appropriate treatment can help make those resources usable and resilient.
Why better groundwater intelligence matters
The Environment Agency’s National Framework for Water Resources 2025 describes groundwater as a valuable resource that provides natural storage and can strengthen supply resilience, particularly when used conjunctively with surface water. But the pressure on that resource is already material: the EA reports that 27% of groundwater bodies have unsustainable levels of groundwater abstraction.
Climate change, population growth and rising demand add to the challenge. Without continued action, the National Framework estimates that England could face a public water supply deficit of up to five billion litres per day by 2055.
Groundwater modelling helps build the evidence needed to respond. By improving understanding of aquifers, recharge, abstraction impacts and future conditions, and by connecting modelling with groundwater mapping and monitoring, water companies, regional groups and regulators can make more informed decisions about where groundwater may be available and how it can be managed sustainably.
Modelling identifies the resource. Water quality can determine how it is used
There is, however, an important distinction between understanding a groundwater resource and being able to use it for drinking-water supply.
A source may be viable from a water-resources and sustainable groundwater abstraction perspective but still face water-quality constraints. Nitrate, arsenic, pesticides and other dissolved contaminants can affect whether groundwater can enter or remain in potable supply without additional management or treatment.
This is where groundwater modelling and groundwater treatment become connected, but distinct, parts of the same resilience question. Modelling can help establish the resource position and environmental implications. Where water quality then becomes the barrier, source protection, blending, operational controls and, where appropriate, sustainable groundwater treatment can form part of the downstream response.
Treatment should never be used to justify unsustainable abstraction. Equally, a strategically useful groundwater resource should not automatically be discounted where the principal constraint is a water-quality issue that can be responsibly addressed.
From better data to better water-resource decisions
The timing matters. AMP8 delivery is already under way while WRMP29 and AMP9 planning are beginning to shape the next generation of water-resource and infrastructure decisions.
For water companies, hydrogeologists, consultants, asset planners and delivery partners, the opportunity is to connect groundwater intelligence with practical asset decisions earlier. Modelling, sustainable abstraction, source protection, water quality and treatment should inform one another rather than sit in separate workstreams.
The new framework is therefore an enabling layer, not an end point. Its lasting value will come from turning better groundwater understanding into better decisions about which resources to protect, recover, rest, blend, develop, monitor or treat as part of a more resilient water-supply portfolio.
WHEN WATER QUALITY BECOMES THE NEXT QUESTION
Better groundwater intelligence can identify where a resource may be strategically valuable. Our Sustainable Groundwater Treatment article looks at the next stage: how water quality, wastewater, validation and whole-life treatment decisions can determine whether that resource can be used sustainably.