There are a number of organisations, national, regional and local, governmental and private,  which have an interest in aspects of the River Deben and the RDA tries to work with as many of them as are relevant to its purposes.  Most of them can be found in the list of government and national organisations on our links page.

The Deben Estuary Partnership (DEP) was formed in 2008 with the vision of creating a plan, with the Environment Agency and Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB, to protect the future of the Estuary. Its objective was to draft, and then implement, a plan which would look not only at flood risk management on the river, but consider how to safeguard all aspects of the Deben estuary from degradation. It looked holistically at the landscape,  the environment and wildlife, a sustainable economy created by farming, marine business and tourism, land and freshwater management and flood and emergency reslience. Local communities were consulted, and as one of the DEP’s founding members, the RDA carried out a survey in 2012 which helped us to represent the views of people who use and enjoy the river.

The Deben Estuary Plan was published in April 2015 and provides a blueprint for the management of the river.

The River Deben Association is also a member of the Deben Estuary Partnership’s Access Group, whose remit is to consider footpaths and other aspects of access to the river, and its Saltmarsh Group. Through the Saltmarsh Group, the RDA works particularly closely with the Eastern Internal Drainage Board: Water Management Alliance, the Environment Agency, the AONB and Suffolk County Council.