“The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is investigating after finding that the “plan for water” was not detailed or specific enough and was neglecting pollution sources beyond sewage spills. Farming is a bigger polluter of rivers than private water companies.”

This is the same “Plan for Water” that our “libertarian inclined” Simon Jupp voted for, having voted down a Lord’s amendment for mandatory targets, and is the basis of his claim that he “would never vote to pollute our water”. – Owl

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

The government’s flagship plan for cleaning up Britain’s waterways is not doing enough to stop farmers polluting rivers, England’s watchdog has found.

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is investigating after finding that the “plan for water” was not detailed or specific enough and was neglecting pollution sources beyond sewage spills. Farming is a bigger polluter of rivers than private water companies.

The watchdog said that policies for dealing with chicken manure and other pollutants washing off farm fields were limited, and that plans to tackle pollution from roads were “notably absent”.

Overall, the OEP said the government was “largely off-track” and faced “very substantial challenges” in hitting its environment targets, which range from halting wildlife declines to restoring waterways to their natural state.

Robbie McDonald, chief scientist at the OEP, said: “Prospects are largely off-track. Water pollution is still problematic. Pollution incidents are not reducing and the ecological status of England’s freshwaters, which is one of the most important barometers of success, has remained largely static. Not all of the major pressures are being attended to. Agricultural pollution is a big issue.”

Cathy Maguire, author of an OEP report to be published on Thursday, said the watchdog had begun a “very substantial piece of work” on the effectiveness of laws and regulators to curb farming and transport pollution in rivers.

The watchdog said that not enough was being done for the government to hit its target of increasing the number of waterways that were close to their natural state from 16 per cent now to 77 per cent by 2027. The Times’ award-winning Clean it Up campaign has been calling for greater resources for regulators and more incentives for farmers to improve the state of the country’s rivers and seas.

Overall, the OEP’s annual progress report found the government was largely off track with regard to meeting 10 out of 40 environmental targets. A lack of evidence meant 15 were impossible to assess. The rest were on track to some degree.

The report painted a mixed picture of the state of England’s natural environment. Of 51 trends, about half were improving but the rest were deteriorating, static or impossible to evaluate because of a lack of data.

Dame Glenys Stacey, OEP chairwoman, said her team’s ability to assess progress towards restoring wildlife and habitats had been hampered by a “really concerning” lack of monitoring and transparency. Thérèse Coffey, the former environment secretary, pledged last year that everyone should live within a 15-minute walk of woodland or other green space but, because of a lack of evidence, this was found impossible to measure.

The watchdog made 47 recommendations urging the government to speed up and scale up action to meet the nation’s environmental targets. Stacey said: “We do now have, to a large extent, control of our own destiny [post-EU], but we’re not moving quickly enough.”

Labour called the report a “damning indictment” of the government’s record on protecting the natural world. “They have left the UK as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with record levels of toxic sewage swilling through our rivers, lakes and seas,” said Steve Reed, shadow environment secretary.

On top of pollution, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed there were more than a million fly-tipping incidents in England last year, a small decrease but largely unchanged on the previous year. Farming groups said the number underplayed the true figure because much illegal rubbish dumping was happening on private land.

The ex-special forces teams fighting fly-tipping

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Rebecca Pow, the environment minister, said: “We were always clear that our targets are ambitious, and would require significant work to achieve, but we are fully committed to creating a greener country for future generations and going further and faster to deliver for nature.”