OEP ‘keenly interested’ in agricultural polluters

Tackling agricultural pollution in rivers will be a key early focus of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) its chair has told the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC).

Dame Glenys Stacey, chair of the recently constituted independent body, told the EAC that the OEP was “already heavily engaged” in working out how it can have the most impact on improving water quality across the UK.

The OEP was created following Brexit to independently enforce environmental laws in the UK and hold government and other public authorities to account. Stacey and the board were appointed in 2020, and Natalie Prosser was subsequently named as interim chief executive.

Stacey said that while pollution from wastewater treatment  had prompted action to reduce harm from storm overflows, diffuse pollution was not being properly addressed.

“It seems to us that it is not clear that agricultural run-off is quite getting the attention that it deserves. We are – let’s put it this way – keenly interested,” Stacey told the committee.

She said the OEP had its “thinking caps on” to make the biggest impact possible without replicating the work of other stakeholders to address this issue. Agriculture is the biggest contributor to water pollution in the UK.

Severn Trent’s chief executive Liv Garfield told the EAC in October that investments to improve river quality by water companies in recent years have been “eaten up” by agriculture.

Stacey praised the attention the water sector had given to reducing harm from combined sewer overflows, particularly what she described as a “turnaround” in the Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat published in February to prioritise protecting and enhancing the water environment.

Resourcing

The Office has been allocated ringfenced funding of £8 million for the current year; £11.5 million next year to set up and that will then reduce to £7.25 million in the following year. Asked whether this would be sufficient to achieve all the organisation’s ambitions, Stacey said it would be sufficient to establish the office, but believed more funding would be required in future.

She said the OEP would “very likely need the money to purchase the right people power to do our work” when it was fully operational.

It currently has 53 staff with permission to add 10 more this year – not including staff to cover the recently approved Northern Ireland remit. Stacey said she expected the OEP to require “about 60 to 120” but only time and experience would tell.

Alignment with Defra

Stacey said the OEP’s strategy, which will be reviewed every 18 months as stipulated in the Environment Act, is “pretty weak on measuring success”. She explained it would be updated to better measure and evaluate the impact of the Office against its environmental goals.

Prosser said the OEP’s early work has highlighted confusion among members of the public about which public authority was responsible for the issue they wanted to make a complaint about.

Stacey said the OEP received 10 complaints relating to water quality and CSOs in the interim stage prior to the Office being granted its powers.