Thousands of pollution incidents downgraded without site visits, data indicates
Environment Agency (EA) staff have downgraded thousands of serious pollution incidents caused by water companies in England without visiting to investigate, according to data obtained via freedom of information (FoI) requests.
The information comes from Robert Forrester, a whistleblower who left the EA in January after nine years of highlighting issues in the water sector. His identity was disclosed in the Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business this week, and he vows to continue fighting to expose the truth.
The FoI data show that 2,778 serious pollution incidents by water companies were reported in 2024. Of these, 2,735 (98%) were downgraded to minor incidents by officials, with only 496 of the cases being investigated on site before the downgrade; the remainder were classified as minor based solely on water company evidence.
This represents nearly a 1,500% rise from 2021, when 174 incidents were downgraded and 60 of those were attended by inspectors.
From the initial 2,778 serious incidents reported by water companies, the EA officially recorded only 75 as serious incidents, a figure the agency described as a 60% increase from 2023.
“There is a significant rise in the number of serious incidents received by the agency, but a huge increase in them being downgraded without any officer attendance,” Forrester said. “The crucial point is that water firms still control whether we attend. I’ve seen the trend shift from on-site visits 12 to 15 years ago to much fewer investigations now, under pressure to protect, investigate, and enforce.”
For the 2025-26 financial year, the EA expects about £149 million in income from water companies (via permit charges and a new enforcement levy) out of a total £189 million budget for water regulation.
Forrester criticized this funding model, arguing that it creates a conflict of interest because the regulator relies on money supplied by the very companies it polices.
“The regulator is too closely tied to the water companies. They fund the regulator’s budget, so the regulator appears to loosen its regulatory grip,” he said.
Forrester left the EA in January after years of suspension and restricted duties, which he believes were due to suspicions that he was blowing the whistle.
In 2021, while Forrester was under a 12-month suspension, the EA’s then-chief executive James Bevan warned staff against speaking to the media. The warning was condemned by Andrew Pepper-Parsons, head of policy at Protect, a UK whistleblowing charity, who said regulators should encourage whistleblowing rather than deter it.
Forrester began exposing what he saw as a cozy relationship between the industry and the regulator in 2017 after a report on the toxicity of sewage sludge was kept from the public domain. Greenpeace eventually published the findings in 2020, revealing that sewage waste spread on UK croplands contained dangerous persistent organic pollutants at levels potentially harmful to human health.
That 2020 Greenpeace investigation suggested the regulatory task of landspreading was becoming harder due to time pressures and tightened budgets, and the toxics results were alarming enough that staff intended to publish them, but the release was blocked until Greenpeace stepped in.
Now unemployed, Forrester plans to collaborate with campaigners to continue exposing sewage pollution and pressuring water companies to be held to account.
An EA spokesperson said: “We receive 100,000 reports a year and respond to every water pollution incident, all of which are carefully assessed. We target our resources on the most serious incidents using real-time data and on-site inspections as needed.
“With our largest-ever budget for water enforcement and compliance, we’ve fundamentally changed how we operate. We’ve added personnel, improved data, and expanded enforcement powers, and this year we expect to conduct 10,000 inspections of water company assets, rooting out wrongdoing and driving better performance.”
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