Caring for Our Rivers

Testing Britain's rivers. Every month. Every site.

The Water Quality Watch is our UK-wide citizen-science monitoring network. Trained volunteers conduct monthly chemical and biological tests at registered river sites; data is shared openly with the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales. £35 trains and equips a new citizen scientist for a full year.

How the Watch works

Once trained, each volunteer is assigned a local monitoring site — typically a stretch of river within a 30-minute drive. Monthly sessions take around an hour: you test for dissolved oxygen, pH, nitrates, phosphates, and macroinvertebrates, then log results to our shared database. The data is quality-checked by our science team and submitted to regulators quarterly.

We currently have 8,400 registered monitoring sites and 2,800 active testers. Sites without active volunteers are shown on our site map — if there is a gap near you, we would like to hear from you.

Join Our Mission for River Restoration

Get involved today and make a real difference in local water quality. Together, we can protect our rivers and wildlife for future generations.

Get Involved

Why citizen science matters for rivers

Government monitoring networks cannot cover every site. Ours can.

Rivers Restored

Wildlife Protected

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Volunteers Engaged

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Community Projects

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Become a citizen scientist

I've been testing the Kennet near Newbury every month for three years. Last spring, we caught a spike in nitrates that turned out to be a slurry incident upstream. Our data was used in the investigation.

Fiona CartwrightWater Quality Watch volunteer, Berkshire

I started because I wanted to do something useful. An hour a month and my data goes to regulators. That is as useful as it gets.

Yusuf OkonkwoCitizen scientist, Manchester

Our local testing group has eight members now. We cover four sites on the Exe. We have a WhatsApp group for when results look odd. It has become genuinely social.

Claire PenhaligonWater Quality Watch volunteer, Devon

Become a citizen scientist

Online training

A self-paced training course covering water chemistry, biological indicators, and sampling methodology. Followed by an in-person induction day at a local site before you begin solo testing.

Monthly testing commitment

One site, one visit per month. You test, photograph, and log results via our app. Your data goes to the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales — and we tell you what it shows.

Data that reaches decision-makers

Our citizen-science data has supported pollution prosecutions, informed abstraction licence reviews, and contributed to national water quality assessments. It is not symbolic — it is used.