About Us

Our Ambitions

Alongside supporting our partners to deliver the Oxford to Cambridge Environment Principles, we see that through working in partnership, at scale and with the Environment at the heart of decision making we can support to ensure it is:

Ambitious, innovative, and world leading. Delivering economic growth and guiding development through the challenges faced over the coming decades, while prioritising the restoration of the natural environment, will require delivery against ambitious sustainability targets.
Systematic and transformative. Adopting a systems approach to growth and infrastructure provision (including green infrastructure) to ensure that the right type of interventions are delivered in the right location at the right time.
Adaptive and resilient to change. Recognising the challenges faced by a changing climate, and how these may develop over the coming years, to ensure that the environment and communities in the area are protected, prepared, and able to adapt to the impacts of change.
Life enhancing. Ensuring that growth is not only practical and appropriate but that it is delivered in a way that increases the health, wellbeing, and contentment of people and nature. For example, recognising the wide-ranging services and wellbeing benefits of increased access to nature.
Evidence based, sustainable, and measurable. Basing decisions about the future on best available evidence to ensure that actions and outcomes are fully understood, are sustainable, and place no additional pressure on the countries already constrained resources e.g. portable water supply. Metrics should be established to ensure that the impacts on the area are monitored and responded to into the future.

Large scale growth will continue within the region regardless of the delivery mechanism (be it centrally or locally led) and this vision remains important to the Environment Agency, driving our ambitions for this significant strategic area.

Our approach

To realise these opportunities, we have adopted the following approach:

Working in partnership with our wider Defra Group colleagues and local leaders to shape and influence the Oxford to Cambridge PrP priorities and programme. Using networks and relationships to link Government and local aspirations, striving to deliver more and add value collectively.
Ensuring that decisions about the future of the Oxford to Cambridge PrP are based on best available evidence so that actions and outcomes are fully understood.
Taking a systems view when testing and trialling new tools and initiatives, to ensure that interventions are delivered in the right place, at the right time.
Actively building capability and knowledge across the Environment Agency and our external partner organisations. We recognise the need for behavioural and organisational change, using our influence to facilitate strength and climate resilience in place.
Recognising and raising awareness of the immediate challenges posed by a changing climate, including indirect consequences such as social inequality, and using our expertise to shape, influence, and facilitate programme and policy change.

To aid delivery, our current projects and areas of work can be broadly aligned under three key themes:

These themes are closely aligned to the ambitions set out in the Cambridge Environment Principles.