Strengthening Environmental Civil Sanctions

Protecting our natural environment is a Government priority. The Government are pleased to announce today that we have laid new secondary legislation to strengthen environmental civil sanctions and provide the environmental regulators with the tools they need to hold operators to account.

Currently, there is a cap of £250,000 on variable monetary penalties imposed by the environmental regulators for a wide range of offences. We are removing this cap to make the penalty unlimited, so that penalties are proportionate to the degree of environmental harm and culpability. Strong safeguards are in place, including the ability of an offender to pay, when regulators determine the size of penalties. The Environment Agency will use the independent Sentencing Council guidelines to underpin all penalties.

Strengthening regulations that ensure polluters will be held to account is part of our wider plan to reduce pollution and protect the biodiversity and ecology of our natural environment. All funding from fines and penalties handed out to water companies that pollute our rivers and seas will be invested in schemes that benefit our natural environment.

We know that people across the country want to see more progress in tackling pollution and, if operators breach regulations, our environmental regulators need the right powers to impose penalties. These new penalty changes will deter organisations from polluting and increase their incentive to comply with environmental regulations.

We are also introducing unlimited variable monetary penalties as a civil sanction for offences under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, to ensure regulators have the right tools to drive compliance across a range of sectors and breaches.

This announcement follows our recent consultation, first announced in “Plan for Water”, on strengthening the enforcement regime where the overwhelming majority of responses from the public supported our proposals. These changes complement a suite of Government action under way to better hold water companies to account, including new powers for Ofwat that will enable it to take enforcement action against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance for both customers and the environment. More details can be found in the attached annex.

Together, these changes will provide a proportionate deterrent and punishment for operators who breach their permits and will help regulators to better protect the environment.

The civil sanction regime for environmental offences should act as a clear deterrent to offenders across all industries, from water companies to waste operators—we will not let companies get away with illegal activity and where breaches are found we will not hesitate to hold companies to account.

As set out in the Government’s “Plan for Water”, we are driving action to strengthen regulation and drive improvements across the water sector, including:

The £2.2 billion of accelerated investment by water companies, to spend on new infrastructure to tackle pollution and increase our water resilience—including £1.7 billion on storm overflow improvements to cut discharges by 10,000 per year.

Creating a new water restoration fund, using money from water company fines and penalties to support local environmental projects.

Delivering long-term catchment action plans—community-led schemes which aim to improve waterways and surrounding eco-systems—to improve water bodies in England.

More than doubling the money for slurry infrastructure by increasing funding to £34 million for farmers to improve slurry storage, reducing a major source of water pollution.

Supporting farmers to store more water on their land through the £10 million Water Management Grant to fund more on-farm reservoirs and better irrigation equipment.

Consulting on banning the sale of plastic wet wipes.

Enabling key water supply infrastructure—such as reservoirs and water transfer schemes—to be built more quickly.

Bringing forward the deadline for water companies to reduce chemicals in wastewater treatment to 2027.

Consulting on extending environmental permits to cover dairy and intensive beef farms, and to improve how this is done for pig and poultry farms, in order to better manage sources of pollution.

Enabling Ofwat to link dividends to company performance, and tightening up measures on “water bosses” bonuses.

Ofwat has also announced measures to penalise companies that fail to properly monitor storm overflows and determined that in the financial year 2023-34, the water sector must return £132 million to customers as a result of underperformance.

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