Northumbrian Water Group

Instead of starting with interventions and then searching for funding, this DASH reverses the logic:

• We start with buyers, funders, corporates and regulators
• We define the outcomes they need - and are willing to pay for
• We then deliberately design interventions, delivery models and governance to meet those drivers

The result is a deliverable, investable pipeline - not an aspirational wish‑list.

This DASH will bring together decision‑makers and capital holders with delivery partners across the estuary system, including:

• Northumbrian Water
• Regulators and statutory bodies
• Port authority and major industry
• Infrastructure and strategic asset owners
• Local authorities and landowners
• River trusts, fisheries and land managers
• NGOs, conservation charities and community voices
• Public, private and blended‑finance funders

1. Define the Tees Estuary investment system

• Agree the functional scale of the estuary (river, estuary, coast, intertidal, catchment links)
• Identify priority system outcomes (nutrients, sediment, flood risk, biodiversity, climate resilience)
• Map who benefits from those outcomes — and who has a reason to pay for them

2. Surface funder and buyer drivers

• Make explicit the regulatory, AMP, ESG, Net Zero, consenting and business drivers
• Clarify investment horizons, risk appetite and constraints
• Frame a set of outcome‑based challenge statements that capital will realistically support

3. Design interventions around finance logic

• Co‑develop multi‑benefit interventions aligned to buyer needs
• Combine:
  • • delivery interventions
    • aggregation mechanisms
    • governance and monitoring
• Prioritise solutions that:
  • • improve water quality
    • reduce sediment and dredging pressure
    • lower flood and erosion risk
    • support biodiversity recovery
    • deliver economic and social value

4. Build delivery and funding pathways

• Define who builds, who operates, who maintains, and who benefits
• Match interventions to the right type of capital:
  • • grants and catalytic funding
    • blended finance
    • outcome‑based payments
• Align delivery with AMP8 and other regulatory and investment cycles
• Identify regulatory, consenting, data and governance blockers — and who owns removing them

Teams will work around funder‑ and buyer‑led challenge statements, not generic themes.

Each team will produce:

• A clearly defined environmental or system outcome
• A viable intervention or package of interventions
• An identified funding route or buyer
• Named delivery and enabling partners
• A realistic timeframe to delivery

By the end of the DASH, we will have:

By the end of the DASH, we will have:

• A clear Tees Estuary Supercluster concept, including coordination and governance model
• A menu of outcome‑based investment opportunities, not isolated projects
• A prioritised shortlist of interventions deliverable within AMP8 and current funding windows
• A mapped Tees Estuary investment architecture, showing:
  • • who pays for what
    • using which funding instruments
    • at what stage of maturity
• Named organisations pledging leadership, funding or enabling support
• A high‑level roadmap setting out:
  • • what must change
    • who is responsible
    • when delivery can start
• Agreement on the formation and role of a Tees Estuary Restoration Board
• A collective pledge to progress delivery beyond the Festival  

• A deliverable pipeline of nature‑based and hybrid interventions
• Clear routes to shift investment upstream, away from purely end‑of‑pipe solutions
• Better alignment between regulatory pressure, capital spend and environmental outcomes
• A practical mechanism to make AMP8 investment work harder by coordinating co‑funding

• Funders and corporates: credible, investable opportunities aligned to their drivers
• Regulators: coordinated, system‑level solutions rather than piecemeal compliance
• Industry and infrastructure owners: clarity, reduced risk and long‑term certainty
• Communities: tangible environmental, social and resilience benefits
• Nature: recovery at the scale required to be self‑sustaining  

• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities in delivery
• Alignment around shared outcomes, not competing projects
• Ownership of barrier removal
• Commitment to work through a single coordinating forum for the Tees Estuary

To use Innovation Festival 2026 to prototype the UK’s first estuary scale, finance ready nature supercluster - and move immediately from ideas to delivery.