England follows the Water Framework Directive (WFD), a law originally created by the European Union and now kept in UK law through the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations 2017. England's Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/EC) introduced a comprehensive river basin management planning system to help protect and improve the ecological health of our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal and groundwaters. This is underpinned by the use of environmental standards to help assess risks to the ecological quality of the water environment and to identify the scale of improvements that would be needed to bring waters under pressure back into a good condition.