Assessing the Environment Agencies role in protecting and enhancing fresh water in England.
Doing its Job Report: key findings
The report found that Government action is urgently required to:
- Alter and amend the legal rules, codes and guidance under which the Environment Agency (EA) operates. The EA needs to have the freedom to pursue its existing statutory objective to protect and enhance the environment.
- Amend the duties under the 1995 Act so that the EA is not required to consider the costs to the persons or businesses it regulates when exercising its statutory functions.
- Disapply the Regulators’ Code as it currently applies to the EA. In doing so, recognise that the Code constrains the ability of the EA to provide a robust and convincing deterrent to would-be polluters and those who harm the wider environment.
- Disapply section 108 of the Deregulation Act 2015 with respect to the EA, as its purpose is to protect and enhance the environment and not to seek economic growth across businesses.
- Sufficiently fund the EA, and ensure it is appropriately staffed, to undertake the work required to restore the freshwater environment to good ecological status.
- Raise funding for essential EA activities, such as comprehensive monitoring of the wider environment.
