Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Has the UK Government broken the law?
The BBC reports on the view of the UK's environment watchdog that the government and regulators may well have broken the law over how it regulates sewage releases.
They say that the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) announced its preliminary findings into an investigation on Tuesday, leaving the regulators and Defra two months to provide a response before a final decision is made:
In June 2022 the OEP announced it was investigating whether England's regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had failed to meet their legal responsibility to monitor water companies' release of sewage and enforce the rules.
Following a year of evidence-gathering by the organisation and its lawyers, on Tuesday it announced that "it had reasonable grounds for suspecting that the authorit[ies] has failed to comply with environmental law".
The government has come under pressure in recent years over the high levels of sewage discharges into the UK's rivers and seas.
In 2022, water companies in England released sewage for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average.
Releasing sewage into waterways can lead to a build-up of algae which starves local wildlife of oxygen and can produce toxins that are fatal to pets and dangerous to people.
If the OEP's initial conclusions are confirmed then it will make recommendations to MPs to take action against the regulators or will apply to the High Court for urgent judicial review. In practice this means that the Environment Agency or one of the regulators will have to change the way it enforces the law for sewage companies.
They say that the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) announced its preliminary findings into an investigation on Tuesday, leaving the regulators and Defra two months to provide a response before a final decision is made:
In June 2022 the OEP announced it was investigating whether England's regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had failed to meet their legal responsibility to monitor water companies' release of sewage and enforce the rules.
Following a year of evidence-gathering by the organisation and its lawyers, on Tuesday it announced that "it had reasonable grounds for suspecting that the authorit[ies] has failed to comply with environmental law".
The government has come under pressure in recent years over the high levels of sewage discharges into the UK's rivers and seas.
In 2022, water companies in England released sewage for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average.
Releasing sewage into waterways can lead to a build-up of algae which starves local wildlife of oxygen and can produce toxins that are fatal to pets and dangerous to people.
If the OEP's initial conclusions are confirmed then it will make recommendations to MPs to take action against the regulators or will apply to the High Court for urgent judicial review. In practice this means that the Environment Agency or one of the regulators will have to change the way it enforces the law for sewage companies.
