Environmentalists condemn Defra’s PFAS Plan

(by Karma Loveday)

Defra has published a PFAS Plan, setting out the Government’s overall approach to tackling forever chemicals.

The plan said the long-term vision is to “work in partnership, taking a science-based and proportionate approach, to reduce and minimise the impacts of harmful PFAS on public health and the environment, including through the transition to safer alternatives”.

It sought to meet this vision through three work pillars: 

• Understanding and identifying the sources of PFAS, in terms of both what is already known and what needs to be explored.

• Accounting for the movement of PFAS around society and the environment, by tackling PFAS pathways. This includes reducing PFAS at source; preventing PFAS from entering and circulating in the environment; and "transitioning to safer alternatives whilst recognising where critical PFAS uses are still currently needed”.

• Reducing and managing ongoing exposure to PFAS for people, animals and the environment. 

Water minister Emma Hardy said: “This is an important issue for the Government to address. PFAS contamination threatens public health, wildlife and the quality of our natural environment. Acting now is essential to prevent irreversible harm and to ensure that our regulatory frameworks keep pace with scientific evidence.

“This plan provides a foundation for how we will act – decisively but proportionately – to manage risks. Our vision is to reduce and minimise the harmful effects of PFAS while transitioning to safer alternative substances. It reflects our commitment to protect public health and the environment while supporting innovation and economic growth.”

However, England’s largest nature coalition, Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), condemned the plan as “a roadmap to nowhere”. It leads the Chemicals Taskforce and has long been calling for a ban on PFAS and re-alignment with EU standards on chemicals. WCL said there is “a chasm” between the Taskforces’s July 2025 PFAS action plan and the Government’s new plan.

Chloe Alexander, chemicals policy lead at WCL, said: “This plan is a roadmap to nowhere for one of the most serious pollution threats facing nature and public health. After years of warnings about the harms of PFAS, the Government has produced a crushingly disappointing framework that ducks the hard decisions and kicks action into the long grass.

“There are no binding phase-outs, no timetable for ending everyday uses for which affordable alternatives are already available, and no commitment to match the EU’s proposed broad ban on the use and manufacture of all PFAS – despite overwhelming evidence that tackling these ‘forever chemicals’ one by one simply does not work. Instead, the plan leans heavily on more monitoring, guidance and future consultations, while PFAS continue to build up in rivers, soils, wildlife and even our own bodies.

“The roadmap leaves nature and consumers exposed to forever chemicals at the expense of environmental and human health, does nothing to make polluters pay, and lets the UK drift even further behind other countries. Without urgent, precautionary regulation, this plan risks locking in decades of avoidable harm to ecosystems and people alike.”