‘Hot air’: plans to crack down on UK water polluters dismissed as toothless

theguardian.com:

The government’s pledge to raise the cap on the amount of money the Environment Agency can fine water companies for sewage pollution to £250m has been described as “hot air”, as the Guardian can reveal the regulator has failed to levy any such penalties since it was given powers to do so 12 years ago.

Variable monetary penalties (VMPs) were introduced in 2010 to enable the Environment Agency to directly levy fines for serious environmental offences without having to go through expensive and lengthy court proceedings, but to date the agency has not levied a single VMP against water companies.

Despite this, the environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, last week announced a 1,000-fold rise in the cap on VMPs, from £250,000 to £250m, and said the bigger financial penalties “will act as a greater deterrent and push water companies to do more, and faster, when it comes to investing in infrastructure and improving the quality of our water” and that “the polluter must pay”.

But the Environment Agency does not appear to be in a position to underpin the move. After frequent deep budget cuts, the agency’s chief executive, Sir James Bevan, has said the regulator is no longer sufficiently funded and that it would have to pause or stop some of its environmental protection activities.

The lack of VMPs is part of a broader picture of dwindling enforcement on the part of the regulator, which has told its staff to “shut down” and ignore reports of low-impact pollution events, saying it does not have enough money to investigate them.

The Environment Agency has also slashed its water-quality monitoring regime, has downgraded 93% of prosecutions for serious pollution over four years, despite recommendations from frontline staff for the