The Environment Agency is continuing work on its largest ever criminal investigation to date into potential breaches of environmental permit conditions by all water and sewerage companies discharging into English waters.

The extent of potential non-compliance involves more than 2,200 wastewater treatment works. To date, the investigation team has reviewed over 35,000 exhibits and produced over 1,050 statements from evidence handling, review and analysis.

As well as leading on the main investigation, the team has also worked on a separate investigation involving the sentencing hearing of Anglian Water Services Ltd. The company was ordered to pay over £50,000 in fines and costs in a case brought as part of the EA’s wider criminal investigation in May this year.

The investigation team has now moved to the next phase and is gathering statements from external witnesses.

In an update on progress, the EA said that the investigation must comply with all criminal investigation rules to gather and produce evidence to a very high standard and satisfy the criminal burden of proof which is ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’

“This results in the investigation being more complex which is why timescales of our investigation are longer than others,” the update says.

Potential witnesses range from campaign and pressure groups, academics, citizen science projects, leisure water users and businesses, NGOs around the water sector and people who have reported a relevant incident to the Environment Agency.

A Senior Investigating Officer who is working as part of the witness strategy group commented:

“First, we had to establish who might be a potential witness and then understand what information those witnesses might hold about the sites we are investigating. Witnesses are important in bringing justice and we welcome their knowledge and experience. We will also continue to monitor stakeholder groups for potential witnesses.”

EA team looks to whistleblowers who may be able to provide information

The EA team have also been looking to whistleblowers who may be able to provide information. Last year the Environment Agency launched a new whistleblowing portal enabling water company staff to report environmental wrongdoing by their own organisations and industry.  

If water company workers suspect the organisation where they work has done, is doing, or going to do something wrong, and they’ve already raised these concerns with them but nothing, or not enough, has been done, there is now a dedicated route to report those concerns in confidence – securely, safely and directly. 

The Agency said the information provided via the whistleblowing portal is handled in a secure and confidential way and assessed by its intelligence teams, to be used in the EA’s regulatory role to prevent, guide or enforce where harm or mismanagement of the environment is happening. 

The portal is also open to workers from waste, nuclear, fishery, farming, agricultural and chemical companies as well as water firms.  People can also report their concerns via the Environment Agency’s incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60.

“The new whistleblowing portal reinforces our continued commitment to stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to improve water quality, and we are doing this through a fourfold increase in water company inspections to hold companies to account. Inspections carried out by the Environment Agency will rise to 4,000 a year by the end of March 2025, and then to more than 10,000 from April 2025,” the EA says. 

Next steps include inviting water companies to interview

The Agency is currently continuing to gather evidence on the environmental effects of the discharges. After gathering witness statements, it will examine victim impacts of the discharges before inviting the water companies to interview.

When the investigation is complete, the Agency will then consider all options available under its Enforcement and Sanctions policy. Environmental permits exist to protect the environment and limit the impact of pollution; water companies have a legal responsibility to comply with their permit conditions.

“As with any live criminal investigation, we are very limited as to what we can share about our inquiries. However, we are committed to sharing information where we can”, the Agency says.