When will the EA enforce the law?
I got a bit excited recently thinking the Environment Agency might be about to start enforcing the law against polluters.
At a meeting of the Wye Catchment Nutrient Management Board on the 29th April, an EA official reported: “We have got a bit of a development in terms of our agricultural regulation… We are piloting a trial on fixed penalty notices”.
This sounded promising. For years, the EA has taken no enforcement action against agricultural pollution on the Wye, beyond issuing ‘warning’ letters or notices. Could this announcement signal a much-needed change in approach? Were they about to start dishing out fines?
I was intrigued to know more about this trial so started to investigate, though I couldn’t find anything about it online.
I asked the EA for more information but they would only confirm that they’re in the early stages of undertaking a national trial on fixed monetary penalties, exploring how they can use their existing powers to issue fines.
The EA already has the power to issue fines to those who break environmental regulations, including the Farming Rules for Water and the Nitrate Pollution Prevention Regulations. They can issue fines of £100 to individuals, or £300 to companies, which are reduced for early payment and increased for late payment. It’s just a power they rarely use. For example, between January and September 2025, the EA issued just two fixed monetary penalties in England. One was to a farm in Devon for not complying with rules around manure storage, and the other was to a farm in Derbyshire for not complying with rules governing the spreading of manure. That’s it for the whole country, leaving most illegal farming practice unpunished.
Honestly, what’s the point of agricultural regulations if there’s no penalty for breaking them? Would people always obey speed limits if there were no speed cameras? Would we follow parking restrictions if there were no fines? When illegal activity happens without consequence, farmers doing the right thing (such as investing in proper storage to manage their manure responsibly) end up at a financial disadvantage. Decent farmers and ethical businesses want a strong regulatory floor to create a level-playing field.
When will the EA use the powers it already has to enforce the law?
It’s beyond depressing that we’re still calling for this after years of campaigning. It’s been nearly five years since George Monbiot presented Rivercide in 2021 and erupted, “Is it too much to ask, to enforce the law? People write me off as some crazy anarchist but I’m calling for the law to be enforced”.
It’s been over two years since I grilled the EA Chair Alan Lovell on stage in Monmouth in 2024 and the audience heckled him, demanding to know when he’d enforce the law. He promised they’d do it “soon”.
How much longer will we have to wait?
I wrote a news story for Friends of the River Wye about this and presented a video asking this question: When will the EA enforce the law?