Experience

Professor Ian Barker has an international reputation as a policy thinker who has had the rare experience of actually having had to deliver operationally the product of his thinking.

This practical perspective underpins the Water Policy International ethos: good policy must work well in practice. It is based on his extensive experience, some of which is outlined below.

Policy, Legislation & Governance

Twenty years’ experience of working with ministers and senior officials in Whitehall, Cardiff and Brussels on a wide range of water and environmental policy areas means that Water Policy International can provide advice based on a sound understanding of ‘how things work’.

Strategy

No one can know what the future will hold, but the water sector is in the unenviable position of having to plan for the long term despite significant uncertainties over water availability and demand. A single view of the future will be wrong

Planning for secure water supplies

Water resources across England are under significant stress, from too much water being abstracted to too many pollutants finding their way into them.

Regulation

Sometimes it can seem to a regulated industry that it is the regulation which is the end in itself, rather than the outcomes which it should be designed to deliver. Good regulation will deliver beneficial outcomes at least cost to the regulated.

Protecting and improving water for people and the environment

Better regulation and a great deal of investment has helped to clean up the UK’s rivers and beaches over the past 25 years. The legacy of the industrial revolution and municipal neglect has been reversed, but there is still a great deal more to do.

Media and conferences

When water is in the news – usually for the wrong reasons – it tends to make headlines. Ian Barker is a seasoned interviewee, and has appeared many times on all the national television and radio channels.