Environment Agency tells staff to ignore pollution complaints, says ex-employee

theguardian.com:

England’s rivers will continue to deteriorate unless the Environment Agency stops “shutting down” the public’s calls about pollution, according to an ex-employee who worked at the agency for three decades.

Officers are told to ignore calls from the public and told not to look at possible incidents if the caller thinks they are lower impact, meaning they fall into so-called category 3 or 4. This has left staff “demoralised” says Helen Nightingale, a catchment planner in north-west Lancashire who left the Environment Agency in April.

Once a river is damaged, it becomes harder to have a major incident on it. “You can only kill so many fish. Once you’ve already killed them, the chances of getting a significant incident are much reduced,” said Nightingale, who is appearing on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme Britain’s Water Scandal on Monday evening. “The health of the poorer rivers will go down quite quickly … it’s just wrong”.

Between 2010 and 2021, the agency’s annual budget for enforcement fell from £11.6m to £7m. Without staff to go out and look at these incidents the Environment Agency relies on the public to accurately report the impact. “You wouldn’t get a member of the public to assess you if you’d had a car accident. The general public aren’t experts,” she said.

Officers will still go and look at rarer category 1 and 2 incidents – such as the blue-green algae currently carpeting Lake Windermere – that are considered to have a major or significant impact on the environment. Data from the National Incident Recording System shows that in 2021, there were 116,000 potential incidents reported, and only 8,000 were attended.

“If you phone up and report a category 3 and someone in the call centre says we’re not going to attend