Identify and Work with Buyers

Key Points

• Buyers were identified based on clear physical and strategic links to Combs Moss, including NW&PB’s downstream water assets, Severn Trent’s biodiversity commitments, and the EA’s natural flood management priorities.

• Early engagement required technical explanation and internal buyer deliberation.

• A co‑design process with the buyers shaped project governance, evidence requirements and monitoring, with regular joint meetings involving the landowner, buyers and delivery team.

• The project collected 18 months of baseline data across hydrology, biodiversity, vegetation and carbon, allowing for buyers’ reporting and auditing needs to be met.

• Outcomes and claims for different ecological outcomes were separated between buyers and a high level of transparency was maintained on who would pay for what. NFM and water stewardship outcomes were split between the two catchments that Combs Moss feeds into, and payments for biodiversity interventions (sphagnum planting) were made by Severn Trent.

• The funding model shifted from a potential SPV to direct upfront payments, after all buyers expressed a preference for single‑year contributions rather than multi-year payments.

• Capital works were delivered 2023–2025, supported by additional NW&PB employee volunteer planting, with long‑term monitoring continuing to 2029.

 

Identifying Potential Buyers

Combs Moss is an upland blanket bog situated above the Derbyshire town of Buxton, sitting at the headwaters of two distinct catchments. One drains toward Buxton and the River Wye, the other toward Greater Manchester and the Mersey system.

Underpinned by the Environment Agency’s interest in the site’s potential flood risk reduction benefits (see Milestone 1), MFFP began the buyer engagement process by mapping organisations with a tangible connection to Combs Moss.

Nestlé Waters & Premium Beverages UK (NW&PB) emerged early in this process because it operates the Buxton Natural Mineral Water and Nestlé Pure Life Spring Water bottling site, with one of its water sources located at Lightwood, the latter sitting below Combs Moss. NW&PB has public global water stewardship targets that requires the company to demonstrate volumetric water benefits (VWB) in locations connected to its operations. Previous flooding incidents had also highlighted the vulnerability of the area.

Severn Trent – the local water company – was also identified as a potential funder. MFFP had collaborated with Severn Trent on other projects.

 

Early Corporate Engagement

When buyer engagement began in 2019/2020, there was relatively little precedent for private investment in peatland restoration beyond Corporate Sustainable Responsibility. As a result, early conversations with buyers frequently involved explanations of the restoration process, the expected outcomes and the types of evidence that would eventually need to be produced. In most cases, the corporates’ internal governance arrangements meant that several iterations of discussion were required within each organisation before formal interest could be confirmed.

 

Governance and reporting requirements

Once awareness and initial interest was established, engagement shifted into a co‑production phase. Severn Trent and NW&PB began to set out their internal requirements for evidence and governance, which had a direct influence on how the project was designed.

For example:

• NW&PB needed confidence that the project could provide annual volumetric water storage calculations aligned with the World Resources Institute’s water stewardship methodology and robust enough to withstand external audit in its accounting.
• Severn Trent set out the types of biodiversity evidence it required, including clear measurements of sphagnum planting and habitat change.
• The Environment Agency clarified how natural flood management outcomes would need to align with its Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) business case approach, including m³ stored; peak flow attenuation.

MFFP convened regular governance meetings, weekly or fortnightly during intense phases, so that the landowner, EA, Severn Trent Water, NW&PB and the delivery team could coordinate decisions about governance requirements, data collection, financing and financing decisions. When entering capital works phase (see below), this cadence also helped the partnership work around bird‑nesting seasons, weather windows and contractor availability, and made it easier to tackle logistics such as helicopter lifts to move materials into remote locations.

 

Monitoring and data collection

These governance requirements made it necessary to develop a monitoring framework capable of serving several different purposes. Working with the University of Derby, MFFP designed a system that combined hydrological monitoring, vegetation surveys, biodiversity observations and carbon flux measurements, supported by four field labs installed across the site.

A key feature of the project’s development was the collection of baseline data for eighteen months before any interventions were carried out. This allowed future measurements to be directly compared with pre-restoration conditions, which was particularly important for corporate audit processes.

The modelling had to express both a total water‑storage potential (for public NFM funding) and an annualised water‑storage benefit (for corporate water‑stewardship accounting under the VWBA methodology), alongside biodiversity monitoring and habitat change.  In building the methodology for these metrics, interviewees emphasised the use of conservative, transparent assumptions to preserve credibility once monitoring began.

Funding for this data collection and modelling came from multiple sources.

The initial survey, catchment modelling and the installation of monitoring equipment were funded jointly through the EA and Combs Moss investment-readiness grant (see Milestone 1). NW&PB then agreed to fund the ongoing hydrological monitoring associated with VWBA reporting for a five‑year period, up to 2028. Severn Trent funded biodiversity monitoring relating to sphagnum establishment. The University of Derby’s carbon flux work was supported through its partnership with Severn Trent and Moors for the Future. Through this shared structure, the project was able to deliver a comprehensive, multi‑functional evidence base that met the different requirements of all participating buyers.

 

Separation of Outcomes and Payments

While each buyer desired separate outcomes from the site’s restoration, avoiding “double counting” was essential to ensure that these organisations could make claims attributable only to their funding contributions.

MFFP used the site’s geographic features and separation of intervention types to accomplish this.

Because the hydrology of the site naturally splits into two separate catchment systems, the interventions and resulting water storage volumes could be clearly attributed to separate pots of funding. In effect, NW&PB funded all NFM interventions only on the Buxton/Lightwood catchment (the side of the site that influences their water asset and flood‑risk area), while the EA funded NFM interventions only on the Manchester/Mersey catchment side. This avoided overlap in claims related to cubic metres of water stored, peak flow attenuation, and other NFM benefits.

While NW&PB and the EA funded NFM structures, such as gully blocks, bunds, and dams, Severn Trent funded interventions that would more clearly benefit biodiversity levels, mainly sphagnum moss planting across the site to support peat formation and moisture retention.

Representatives of these organisations state that full transparency on the finances and allocation of claims was critical to this co-design phase. This included conversations on the impact of COVID 19 and inflation, which affected capital inputs, such as helicopter fuel and timber availability.

 

Payment structures

At the outset of the project, MFFP and its project adviser (Nature Finance) considered establishing a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to manage the flow of funds. The rationale was that an SPV could, in principle, receive repayable finance, contract with multiple buyers, and distribute payments back to investors once ecosystem‑service outcomes were delivered. This reflected early assumptions, common at the time, that nature‑based projects would rely on repayable private capital, with buyers paying for outcomes over time rather than upfront.

However, as buyer engagement progressed, NW&PB, Severn Trent Water and the Environment Agency expressed a preference for paying their contributions upfront, within single financial years, rather than committing to long‑term outcome‑based payments or repayable models. This removed the central rationale for borrowing or for maintaining a standalone investment entity and helped reduce complexities around aligning public and private funding cycles though project stakeholders noted this was still a difficult task to accomplish with even single-year funding timeframes.

At the same time, the Peak District National Park Authority, which hosts MFFP, confirmed that it could manage the required cashflows internally and had the governance capacity to administer multiple funding agreements without creating a new legal structure.

As a result, the SPV option was abandoned. The project instead used a direct‑funding model, in which each buyer contracted with the National Park Authority for the portion of works linked to their intended outcomes. Payments were made predominantly upfront, with separate multi‑year payments for monitoring where required (particularly for hydrological reporting to NW&PB). This structure reduced complexity, lowered transaction costs, and aligned with buyer expectations, while still ensuring that funding flowed to the relevant interventions and monitoring activities.

 

Capital delivery, results to date and outlook

Major capital works began in 2023 and concluded in 2025, including:

• 187 hectares of land planted with 233,250 sphagnum plugs
• 34 hectares of land planted with 85,000 native flowering plants
• 1,858 dams created
• 1,456 metres of steep-sided slopes reprofiled
• Bunding created on 37 hectares of land

 

As an added activity, NW&PB‘s employees also took part in volunteer days to plant Sphagnum across two hectares, linking internal engagement to NW&PB’s support of the project.

Monitoring results so far suggest promising improvements in water retention and peat stabilisation, though full hydrological analysis will continue over several years.

Long-term monitoring undertaken by MFFP and the University of Derby now focuses on measuring hydrology, carbon‑flux assessments, water‑table dynamics, vegetation change, and biodiversity monitoring via acoustic methods.

An early social‑impact assessment conducted with input from partners showed a positive return when wider environmental and social benefits were also considered, including the education and engagement lens to the technical monitoring, reflecting volunteer involvement and outreach through local centres – including a children’s poster competition.

Looking ahead, the project will continue with its monitoring and data collection programme up to 2029, with the aims of sharing its learnings more widely to support similar projects across the area.

 

Case study cover image from Nestlé Waters & Premium Beverages.