The Environment Agency (EA) has launched an eight-week consultation on scrapping the £250,000 cap on civil penalties.
The consultation seeks views on when penalties are used, how they are calculated and the appeals process. The EA says the new enforcement powers would allow them to apply penalties that are “quicker and easier” to enforce.
Environment Agency Executive Director John Leyland, commented: “These new enforcement powers will be an extra tool in our armoury to hold polluters to account.
“They will act as a further deterrent – boosting compliance across a range of sectors and helping us provide stronger protection to the environment, communities and nature.”
These new enforcement powers will be an extra tool in our armoury to hold polluters to account.
This follows the government announcement that it will lift the current limit of £250,000 that the EA can impose directly on operators, as well as expand variable monetary penalties to cover more offences under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.
The EA says the changes will give regulators the right tools to drive compliance across a range of sectors, strengthen enforcement and hold all who hold environmental permits to greater account.
All future environmental fines and penalties from water companies will be put into a new Water Restoration Fund, the EA says, which will be reinvested back into the environment by supporting local groups and community-led schemes.
Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience Rebecca Pow, commented: “Polluters must always pay – by lifting the cap on these sanctions, we are simultaneously toughening our enforcement tools and expanding where regulators can use them.
“This consultation builds on government action to increase investment, toughen enforcement and tighten regulation and will make sure there is a proportionate punishment for operators that breach their permits and harm our rivers, seas and precious habitats.”
We are simultaneously toughening our enforcement tools and expanding where regulators can use them.
There are clear provisions in the Sentencing Council guidelines that will ensure the level of penalties levied is proportionate to the degree of environmental harm and culpability, the EA says.
These include safeguards to ensure the operator’s ability to pay, the size of the operators, and the degree of responsibility and harm, amongst others – all of which are taken into account when imposing a penalty.
The EA says penalties will only be applied where it is shown beyond a reasonable doubt that an offence has occurred.