Since December last year, the Environment Agency has had the power to hand out on the spot fines for breaches, with an unlimited cap, as part of government efforts to limit pollution. But the Environment Agency data show that no on the spot fines have been handed out, despite more than 100 spills being identified by the watchdog this year.
Who thinks a bureaucracy would be able to investigate an incident in under 12 months?
Since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded 63 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, resulting in fines of over £151 million, for other major pollution incidents elsewhere on the network.
That looks more like the right timescale, eh?
All this sewage dumping is portrayed as greedy uncaring businessmen carpet-bagging. I daresay they are, but I suspect it’s more to do with the dumping being the least-cost option when trying to comply with conflicting regulations and demands.
They take£151m away from the funds available to prevent sewage releases.
Very clever.
Water companies will have to increase salaries to attract talent because so few camdidates want the opprobrium of working for a water company.
So less money is available to invest in reducing sewage spills.
IMHO, fining a company is pointless… Essentially it’s just levying an extra cost on its customers. Fines should be imposed on people – the directors and those with “significant control” (and possibly higher levels of management) of the company. That way, somebody will actually get to “carry the can”.
It’s like the ludicrous concept of one government department fining another – all they’re doing is shifting taxpayers’ money from one pocket to another! If you’re going to issue such fines they should be imposed on the higher-grade Civil Servants in the department. Let there be some actual responsibility taken in exchange for the high salary and gold-plated pension.
Norman,
“All this sewage dumping is portrayed as greedy uncaring businessmen carpet-bagging. I daresay they are, but I suspect it’s more to do with the dumping being the least-cost option when trying to comply with conflicting regulations and demands.”
It’s more that the dumping is an extreme situation, a rare event. Do you go building a load of really expensive capacity when that happens, or just tell people not to go swimming in the poopy river for a couple of days?
It would be like building 4 extra lanes onto the A43 because of the British grand prix weekend rather than just telling people to maybe go and see granny in Northamptonshire the following weekend.
No-one cared, their water was clean and they lived in blissful ignorance until some wankers put drones up and started filming it, and the public lost their minds over it.
I’m guessing that the reporter thinks “on the spot fines” means an agency worker sees video of the spill, marches off to the head office of the company, bursts into the CEO’s office and says “Right. That’s a million pounds from you. Pay up or you’re jugged.”
Somehow I don’t think that’s what it actually means.
Also, elements of “We know we had to dump excess sewage, untreated, into a river. Any progress on the planning application for the treatment plant we’ve been trying to build since 2011 to increase our capacity? Still waiting on the bat check? Rumours of a newt mean no construction possible? Nice middle-class protesters still chaining themselves to trees to stop any site surveys?”
Agree with the Baron: the fines have to bite into director or manager remuneration to have any meaning. Although the risk of fines would get built into director compensation over time. And assuming a human life is worth £2m, it’s hard to imagine how you’d prove that the english water companies could have killed 75 people in terms of life years since 2015. I wonder if they accept the punishments as it’s not worth the fighting.
It does remind me of the case of the (local) government taking the government to court for tax evasion which was found by the government to be legal avoidance.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2021/909.html
The available compensation in society just getting moved around a bit with lawyers taking a cut.