Environment Agency chair says £25m not £250m pollution penalties would suffice

An appropriate cap for penalties that could be imposed on polluting water companies by the Environment Agency, would be £10m-£25m according to its chair Alan Lovell.

Giving evidence to the EFRA Committee last week, Lovell said his view was that the cap should increase from the current £250,000 to £250m, but that he personally considered £250m “higher than should be given to us for a penalty”. Former Defra secretary of state, Lovell, explained: “I think it is important that there is a distinction between a less serious issue, which we deal with using a penalty, and the time-consuming but ultimately visible and vital process of taking things through the court and asking it to levy a fine.”

Lovell said the EA was in discussion with Defra on what the limit should be, and that this was one of four possible changes being considered to the EA’s variable money penalty imposing powers. The others were:

• making penalties available for Environmental Permitting Regulation offences;

• applying a civil standard of proof rather than a criminal standard of proof more widely; and

• hypothecation for the agency to be able to use penalties to do its work better.

Lovell said the changes would “make a considerable difference to both the speed and the sharpness of our teeth”.

He added that water had dominated his first six months as chair. He commented: “I am very pleased with the plans that are in draft for the next AMP, the next five-year period, which looks to have a significant increase in the level of spend on resources and quality. I believe that to be appropriate.”

The EA’s chief executive, Sir James Bevan, also gave evidence to the committee where he:

• declared water as the number-one future challenge – “We need to make sure that we focus as much on tackling farming pollution as we do on pollution from water companies, and that as much on ensuring water quantity —that is, that we have enough for the next 20 or 25 years—as we do on water quality.”

• defended operator self-monitoring;

• defended his account of when the EA became aware of sewage spills when quizzed by Barry Gardiner MP;

• argued the EA does not need to be restructured; and

• called for stakeholders to pool water water quality data “because none of us is as good as all of us, so that together we have a better understanding of what is going on in the water environment”.

He added the caveat: "Some of that data is very dodgy. An iPhone picture of a brown stream is not evidence of faecal contamination.”