Channel 4 News takes aim at enforcement undertakings as ‘get out of jail free’ cards

(by Karma Loveday)

A Channel 4 News special report last week accused the Environment Agency of actively helping water companies avoid criminal prosecution for pollution, by pursuing ‘enforcement undertakings’ instead of court cases. This is where polluters are able to make remedial payments to environmental charities to undertake work to improve local waterways, instead of going to court.

Channel 4 branded this “a real get out of jail free card,” given payments can be lower than court-issued fines, plus polluters avoid the criminal record and associated reputational damage.

The Environment Agency rejected the criticism, citing that enforcement undertakings deliver swifter justice and directly benefit the environment affected by the pollution.

Interviewed on the programme, campaigner Feargal Sharkey argued the law should be upheld, water firms prosecuted and bosses held personally accountable. He said: “If we put one water boss in jail for six weeks, the whole industry would utterly transform itself at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Sharkey added: “Government now for me have become as wilfully complicit in all of this as the Environment Agency, by knowingly, blatantly, deliberately refusing to enforce the law and letting these companies carry on this fraud.”