England’s environmental watchdog is receiving less funding to tackle sewage pollution in rivers than it did 12 years ago, figures released under freedom of information laws reveal.

Reflects “Spreadsheet” Sunak’s “uninterest” in environmental matters. – Owl

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, has boasted repeatedly that the government has raised Environment Agency funding over the past year. The agency’s total budget has increased slightly in the last financial year to £1.9 billion — but it had been cut by successive Conservative governments since 2010.

Figures provided to The Times show that the agency spent up to £142 million on fighting water pollution in the last financial year, 7 per cent less than the £152 million spent in 2010-11.

The low point in spending to tackle water pollution was 2018-19, when the figure was only £70 million. At that time Coffey was a junior minister in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).

The Environment Agency promised this week that it would “ramp-up” regulation against water companies by expanding the number of specialist auditors by 25 per cent to 100 staff.

However, the figures obtained by The Times reveal that, despite a decade of inflation and increasing pressures, including growing populations, the funding for checks on water quality remains below 2011 levels.

The funding refers to the agency’s “environment protection grant in aid”, which covers all environment protection, not only action on water quality. The money is used to tackle breaches of permits that deal with spills of raw sewage from storm overflows, among other issues.

“We are in a freshwater emergency exacerbated by climate breakdown, industrial pollution and population growth,” James Wallace, the chief executive of River Action, a campaign group, said. “Surely Environment Agency regulatory budgets should not just be recovered from the devastating cuts 13 years ago but potentially doubled, not least to cover the costs of inflation.

“The threat of water insecurity has increased significantly in the past decade, while our rivers have declined to the lowest standard in Europe.”

Only 16 per cent of waterways are considered to have a good ecological status in England, the same level as six years ago. The government’s target is for that proportion to reach 75 per cent by 2027.

Beyond the core grant, the agency also raises money from charges and fees from companies, known as the water quality charges income. That stood at £73 million in the last financial year, the same level as 2018-19. A lack of data for before 2014-15 means that it is impossible to draw a comparison with the levels of 2010-11.

The Environment Agency budget is also under pressure from demands for a pay rise from low-paid staff.

Unions have warned of a “recruitment and retention crisis” and staff have been taking industrial action since the end of last year in an effort to secure what they see as an adequate pay rise.

One Environment Agency insider said the regulator had downgraded efforts to tackle water for years and that “it is not just lack of investment from the water companies over the last decade, but a deprioritising of water [by the Environment Agency] over the same period. Only a reversal of this ideology, and the cuts and processes that underpinned this ideology, will go to providing real change towards protection of the water environment.”

The staffer said monitoring of water had been cut and restrictions had been placed on attending minor pollution incidents, meaning that more serious events could be missed. They said that in the five years before the restriction, more than 1,400 serious incidents had been reported initially as minor ones.

Of the promised increase in regulation, they said: “It may be a step in the right direction, but it may be more lip service, which has been commonplace [from the agency] over the past decade. That has resulted in swathes of experienced officers leaving and the morale of those left behind still at rock bottom.”

Defra said: “We continue to work alongside the Environment Agency to toughen up enforcement against underperforming and polluting water companies. That is why we have boosted funding for the Environment Agency — with £2.2 million a year specifically for water company enforcement activity — so that robust action is taken against illegal breaches of storm overflow permits. Annual water company licence charges also fund [the agency’s] regulatory activity in the water sector.”