New EA chair wants pollution fines boost delivered quickly

The new chair of the Environment Agency has told a House of Lords select committee he hopes the recently appointed environment secretary will “quickly deliver” on his promise of a 1,000-fold increase to environmental fines for companies polluting waterways.

Alan Lovell, who has been with the agency for just three weeks, together with chief executive James Bevan answered the Industry and Regulators Committee’s questions about the current and newly proposed extended powers available to the EA to enforce and prosecute polluters.

Existing civil enforcement powers allow the EA to impose financial penalties up to £250,000 for permit breaches while more serious offences are subject to criminal prosecution with sentencing guidelines set by the courts.

Last week, environment secretary Ranil Jayawardena proposed increasing the civil penalties the EA could impose up to £250 million.

Lovell told the committee: “We are quite delighted that one of the earliest announcements by the new secretary of state was to raise (that) to £250 million – a 1000 times increase, which gives us a much bigger stick to go after bad behaviour.”

He added it would still require criminal standard of evidence, so would not be a simple process, but he felt it would “tip the balance in the discussions with water companies” around pollution incidents.

“We are hoping he will quickly be able to deliver on that promise,” Lovell said.

Chief executive James Bevan added that, under current enforcement procedures, the EA “normally always prosecutes where there is evidence of serious harm or culpability” and believed penalties were a deterrent.

“We normally always win, but it takes time,” he said, adding that for criminal cases the courts have imposed tougher environmental penalties in recent years including imprisonment.

Although that option has not been used for water pollution, Bevan said the EA would seek custodial sentences for water company employees if deemed appropriate.

“We see no reason for white collar criminals to be treated differently,” he remarked.

Lovell’s predecessor Emma Howard Boyd had been especially vocal towards the end of her term as chair that water companies’ boards and and executive teams should face tough penalties for polluting and causing harm to the environment.

Many of the committee’s questions related to combined sewer overflows and the required level of investment to prevent spillages. Bevan told the committee that neither the regulators nor water companies themselves recognised the scale of the problem until recent years when monitoring began. He attributed this to overflows slowly worsening as climate change, population growth and urban creep gradually added pressure to sewer networks.

An investigation is underway by the EA into noncompliance by water companies at wastewater treatment works. Bevan said he was unable to comment on this but revealed it was seeking to answer questions around whether leadership or frontline workers at plants would have been aware of noncompliance.

“Organisations behave like their leaders,” Bevan said. “In a water company or regulator where leadership is clear that protecting the water environment is just as important as supplying water, you get good behaviour. Where you don’t have that clarity you don’t get good behaviour.”