The smell of indequate regulation around England’s water firms
Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency, wasn’t holding back. Fines for polluting water companies in England should be much greater, errant directors should go to jail in the worst cases and investors should not enjoy a “one way bet”. All are reasonable ideas. The current state of pollution in rivers is indeed “shocking”, “unacceptable” and all the other damning descriptions found in the EA’s annual environmental performance report on the water firms.
Serious pollution incidents increased to 62, the highest total since 2013. Seven of the nine privatised firms oversaw increases on 2020 in serious incidents. Only three companies – Northumbrian, Severn Trent and United Utilities – got a four out of four star rating.
Yet the worsening performance prompts an obvious question: how has the EA, the main public body for protecting the environment in England, allowed things to deteriorate this far?
You’ll find little regulatory self-reflection in the report. The closest to it was a new ambition to pursue repeat corporate offenders via criminal prosecutions in less serious incidents, rather than rely on civil powers. Yes, that sounds a good idea – but it would also have been a good idea a decade or two ago. The EA averaged seven prosecutions a year between 2015 and 2021. That’s not many.
Feargal Sharkey, campaigner extraordinaire in this area, rightly pointed out that Howard Boyd has been on the board of the EA for 13 years, has been its chair since 2016 and as recently as August 2019 was writing letters to newspapers about how “water quality in our rivers is now better than at any time since the start of the Industrial Revolution”.
To be fair to her, she was also calling for more government funding for the EA and heavier
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