Grand Union Canal Transfer – Launch of Phase Two Public Consultation

Dear Consultee,

We’re contacting you as required by Section 42 of the Planning Act 2008 regarding the Grand Union Canal Transfer. This is a vital new scheme to bring water from the Midlands to the Southeast which will secure future drinking water supplies, protect the environment, ensure future water availability for canal navigation, and unlock investment in our communities.

The scheme is a joint water transfer project between two water companies, Severn Trent and Affinity Water, and the Canal & River Trust (the Trust) charity, who are the owner and navigation authority of the canals in England and Wales.

This email is to give you notice of our Phase Two Public Consultation on the scheme. This consultation will run from Wednesday 11 February and will close at 11:59pm on Thursday 2 April 2026. Details of how this consultation is being carried out can be found in the Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC), which can be viewed on our scheme website – https://guctransfer.co.uk/.

Since our first consultation in Autumn 2024, we’ve considered all of the feedback we received to inform our proposals.  We’ve continued our engineering and design work and environmental assessments and had ongoing discussions with landowners and other stakeholders, all of which has helped to shape the next stage of development for the scheme.

We’ve now reached the next important milestone where we can share our updated proposals and more details about the scheme. Your organisation has been identified as a prescribed consultee under Section 42 – 44 of the Planning Act 2008 and we’ve recently sent you a letter, as required by the Act, informing you of this consultation. Please find attached a copy of this letter and the notice that accompanied it. The letter provides more information regarding the details of the proposals, the consultation period, how you can access consultation materials and details of our consultation events.

We’ve produced a range of consultation materials which includes documents, plans, and maps to help you understand our proposals.

The full suite of consultation materials will be available to view throughout the consultation on the scheme website. Details of document inspection points where you can view hard copies of selected consultation materials can also be found at https://guctransfer.co.uk/.

We’d appreciate if you could share the details of this consultation and the planned consultation events with your communities via your own communications channels.  Please find attached some pre-drafted content and a copy of our consultation poster which you may find helpful. Please note, you may already have received, or shortly will be receiving, a hard copy of the poster for display within your community.

We encourage you and those within your community to provide your written response to us by 11.59pm on Thursday 2 April 2026, so that we have time to collect and assess all consultation responses before we finalise our DCO application. Responses received after this time may not be considered.

All responses must be made in writing by either:

If you have a question about the scheme, if you need hardcopy documents or have any other queries, please do get in contact at any time by emailing  contact@guctransfer.co.uk, or calling us on 0121 270 5920 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm).  Alternatively, we’d be pleased to meet you at one of our in-person consultation events.

We look forward to sharing the outcome of the consultation and updates on the Grand Union Canal Transfer with you and the communities you represent as the scheme progresses.