College of Business and Law at the University of the West of England in Bristol

Invitation for Applications

Fully funded interdisciplinary PhD studentship in Water Governance Legal Frameworks and Regional Outcomes

Application Deadline

16 August 2026

Start Date

1 October 2026

Context

With public trust at an all-time low, following regular spills of raw sewage into rivers and waterways, England and Wales face a deepening crisis of their water systems rooted in decades of policy choices, regulatory failure, and structural tensions of a privatised industry.

Following the Independent Water Commission's report in July 2025, the government has committed to a major overhaul of the regulatory architecture in England, including a single integrated water regulator. Wales is considering parallel reforms, while Scotland continues with a publicly owned model. This moment of institutional change creates an opportunity to examine how legal and regulatory design shapes outcomes for regions and communities.

UK's three jurisdictions, operating within broadly comparable physical and economic environments, offer meaningfully different combinations of ownership, regulation, and governance philosophy. The reform underway enables comparison between the emerging English architecture and the longer-established Scottish and Welsh models.

Research Focus

We invite research proposals exploring:

• Whether ownership structure explains differences in investment, environmental performance, and the spatial distribution of costs and benefits;
• Whether embedding water governance within wider statutory frameworks, such as the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, shapes outcomes;
• Whether integrated regulation, as England is now developing, alters capacity to address cross-cutting challenges including catchment management, agricultural pollution, and climate adaptation;
• Whether legal innovation (e.g. recognition of rights of nature) holds a transformative potential, and how governance arrangements distribute costs and benefits across regions, communities, and stakeholders as climate pressures intensify.